2006, Vol.19, No.3

Journal of Modern English Drama 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.11

pISSN : 1226-3397
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medak

Kang, Kwan SooHellman's Days to Come shows the conflict between labor and capital in the Depression Era. People in Callom, a small local community, live harmoniously with each other. In this small town, everybody knows everybody else and no hard feelings have existed between the owner and the workers. But when the Great Depression comes, the harmonious order is threatened. Hellman deals with the collapse of this harmonious community from the liberalistic standpoint. In the Depression Era, many dramatists treat labor problems with left-wing politics and Marxist's class struggle. But Hellman thinks the owner and the workers are one family, not the antagonistic poles of class struggle. Hellman's political opinion is well expressed by her identification with Andrew. He is the paternalistic and liberal owner of the brush company in the small town. His company is in trouble, so he tries to solve the financial problem by giving the workers less money. He wants to solve the problem in a peaceful way, but he faces the workers' strike. Hellman's interest in the labor conflict focuses not on the class struggle, but on the family and the familial community. Hellman deplores the breakdown of the harmonious community in the hard times. In this play, Hellman is cynical and sad like a preacher in Ecclesiastes. Hellman is angry and rebellious in some plays like The Little Foxes and The Watch on the Rhine, but she looks at Andrew's frustration with a sad eye in this work. Hellman identifies with Andrew when he tries to save his company and his community. Hellman takes a liberalist position when she portrays Andrew and his suffering. In Days to Come, Hellman's hero is defeated and lets evil destroy the lives of his friends and his community, but Hellman raises a serious problem in Andrew's frustration and his helplessness.

Noh, AegyungThis essay defines primarily what is political in Samuel Beckett's work and life, hence offering a certain corrective to the imbalance in current Beckett criticism, which has often dismissed the writer's political dimension as a marginal and even irrelevant topic for serious critical discussions. Reading through such plays as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Catastrophe, and the posthumously published Eleuth ria, it suggests working in Beckett's oeuvre is 'individualism' resisting the potentially totalitarian impulse lurking within any social collective. This tendency features again in his life―Beckett's interaction with a radically anarchic mentor at Trinity college, his involvement in Resistance during the war, and finally, the political gestures taken throughout his career, for instance―and one can trace it back to what David Weir termed the "anarchic" politics of modernism, the artistic origin of the writer. The essay overall tries to overcome the prohibitive limitations in the range of the subject matters of current Beckett studies by extending its political spectrum.

Seo, Yeong-yoonYeats tried to create new Irishness by restoring a pre-colonial Irish identity through national myths. By reminding the Irish people of the ancient mythical heroes, Yeats wished to instill them with a sense of national self-esteem and display the mythic past as a mirror of the future.In Deirdre Yeats dramatized the myth-making process. Here Naoise, who has carried off Deidre, the King's bride, is trapped and killed by the order of the jealous King Conchubar. Deirdre, left alone with the Musicians, breaks out of the world of established legend in which she would be predetermined as a passionate victim, and begins to direct her own fate by snatching the First Musician's knife. Finally Deirdre makes her myth by writing the finish to her tragic love story.Travelling minstrels, the Musicians recognize in the fate of two lovers a pattern of archetypal characters, such as Lugaidh Redstripe and his wife. They introduce the play's action, but do not complete it. They could impose form on the tragic story of two lovers, preserve it as a racial archetype, and transmit it to the descendants of ancient Ireland. Deirdre acknowledges their role by giving their leader her bracelet as a token of having the story right. The two lovers' story could be a timeless myth when handed down to posterity by the Musicians.Deirdre, however, ends unsatisfactorily. Conchubar's last speech vests sufficient authority in himself, but it is contradictory to the previous Conchubar's image revealed as a crafty intriguer.Key Words archetype, Deirdre, Ireland, Irishness, myth, Yeats 서영윤 (단독연구)한성대학교