『로미오와 줄리엣』: 메를로-퐁티의 『지각의 현상학』을 통한 다시 읽기

Abstract

This paper aims to go away from the argument that this play is either a play of fate or a play of character. Rather I think that the elucidation of the life and death of Romeo and Juliet in this play can be more clearly explored in view of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, for Romeo and Juliet experience not unavoidability of fate but concrete acts of love through intersubjectivity. In view of Merleau-Ponty, Romeo’s love for Rosaline is not authentic, real acts of love but mere thoughts about love. On the contrary, Romeo’s love toward Juliet is true and real in presence of the acts of love because his body-subject is mutually intertwined with her body-subject. Merleau-Ponty contends that love is not a thing capable of possession, but it is to establish his relations with the world; it is an existential signification. While the worlds of Montague and Capulet are relatively closed worlds dominated by hatred and violence, Romeo’s and Juliet’s acts of love go toward the open world in which they transit from what they are to what they intend to be. The signification of their love and death through intersubjectivity is manifested through dialectic process in the field of phenomenology.