근대와 남성의 성: “이루지 못한 쾌락” 시와 남성 정체성의 위기

Abstract

This paper purposes to investigate the crisis of masculine identity projected in the so-called “Imperfect Enjoyment” poems written in the Restoration period. This paper argues that some English versions of “Imperfect Enjoyment” poems go further in revealing male anxiety while describing the unfortunate incident of “premature ejaculation” than its Latin and French counterparts. In Latin and French counterparts, this paper argues, male sexual debacle is presented as temporary thus recoverable though humiliating, so it does not put fundamental questions on the male authority based on the potency of phallus. However, this paper points out that some English versions of “Imperfect Enjoyment” poems relate the male debacle with the crisis of male sexuality and masculine identity in that these poems regard the failure of phallus not as temporary but as fundamental. George Etherege’s “Imperfect Enjoyment” dodges the male crisis as neatly as possible by employing metaphoric devices that distance the male debacle from the fundamental male crisis and, in so doing, by silencing female voice. Yet, this paper argues, the success of these strategies is temporary and limited as the success is only functional in the realm of poetic rhetoric monopolized by a male poet. In Aphra Behn’s “Disappointment,” male anxiety is exploited to the full and the crisis of phallus and masculine identity is realized as the authority and potency of phallus is found groundless and the male sexual role and the female one are radically reversed. In this poem, the male becomes the female as his phallus cannot perform its promised function. This paper finds the fundamental doubt on male sexuality in John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’s “Imperfect Enjoyment.” In this poem, female sexual desire comes to the fore, thus making the female not as beneficiaries of male sexual desire but as sexually autonomous beings. In so doing, this poem sees the failure of phallus as the fundamental condition of male existence. This poem, this paper finally argues, takes male authority and the phallic myth into pieces, painfully recognizing males as beings stranded in the world where they are deprived of the power of their illusory phallus while females are demanding sexual gratification.