메타픽션적 관점에서 아시아계 미국 문학 읽기: 『동양, 서양으로 가다』를 중심으로
Metafictional Reading of Asian American Literature: Focusing on East Goes West
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, an important text of Asian American Literature in its formative period, has been studied and critiqued in terms of its social context, realistic representation, and its in-depth criticism of American society. In the same vein, this work has been generally considered as an autobiography, in which the narrator is unproblematically identified with the author. Drawing on Patricia Waugh’s theoretical assumption that metafictional tendency is inherent in all novels, this paper attempts to read East Goes West as an autobiographical metafiction, which explores unstable relationship between immigrant autobiography and American reality. Firstly, it attempts to read the text as mimesis of process, rather than mimesis of product. As a “story about creating a story,” East Goes West implies reality is also constituted in the same way the text is produced. Secondly, this paper analyzes how Kang constructs his text, interweaving and parodying various texts such as Elmer Gantry, The Great Gatsby, and “Yon Yonson” song. The intertextuality reveals the text is constituted in relationship with other texts, not as mimesis of reality. Thus, the text functions as an effective immigrant satire which doubts Western concept of linear progress and successful assimilation and integration American dream seems to promise. The metafictional reading of this work will, hopefully, motivate another metafictional reading of other Asian American texts, which have been subject to stereotypical label of realism, leading up to creation of a genealogy of Asian American metafictions.
Abstract
Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, an important text of Asian American Literature in its formative period, has been studied and critiqued in terms of its social context, realistic representation, and its in-depth criticism of American society. In the same vein, this work has been generally considered as an autobiography, in which the narrator is unproblematically identified with the author. Drawing on Patricia Waugh’s theoretical assumption that metafictional tendency is inherent in all novels, this paper attempts to read East Goes West as an autobiographical metafiction, which explores unstable relationship between immigrant autobiography and American reality. Firstly, it attempts to read the text as mimesis of process, rather than mimesis of product. As a “story about creating a story,” East Goes West implies reality is also constituted in the same way the text is produced. Secondly, this paper analyzes how Kang constructs his text, interweaving and parodying various texts such as Elmer Gantry, The Great Gatsby, and “Yon Yonson” song. The intertextuality reveals the text is constituted in relationship with other texts, not as mimesis of reality. Thus, the text functions as an effective immigrant satire which doubts Western concept of linear progress and successful assimilation and integration American dream seems to promise. The metafictional reading of this work will, hopefully, motivate another metafictional reading of other Asian American texts, which have been subject to stereotypical label of realism, leading up to creation of a genealogy of Asian American metafictions.
참고문헌 (31)
- 구은숙, "19세기 흑인 여성 작가의 글쓰기와 흑인 여성의 정체성-- 헤리어트 윌슨의 자서전적 소설과 헤리어트 제이콥스의 자서전", 영미문학페미니즘, 4, pp.8~32 (1997), 한국영미문학페미니즘학회
- 김대중, "강용흘의 『동양, 서양으로 가다』에 나오는 코스모폴리탄 멜랑꼴리아", 동서비교문학저널, (30), pp.45~71 (2014), 한국동서비교문학학회
- 김욱동, "강용흘: 그의 삶과 문학" (2004), 서울대학교 출판부
- 김욱동, "박노영의 『중국인의 기회』: 이민 자서전의 가능성과 한계", 외국문학연구, (32), pp.31~49 (2008), 외국문학연구소
- "성경" (2020), 아가페
- Barth, John, "The Literature of Exhaustion", Atlantic, 220(2), pp.62~76 (1967)
- "Bruce Barton", Wikipedia, ~ (2022)
- Gass, William, "Fiction and the Figures of Life" (1970), Knopf
- Genius. Dir, "Michael Grandage", Riverstone Pictures, ~ (2016)
- Goellnicht, Donald C, "Minority History as Metafiction: Joy Kogawa’s Obasan", Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 8(2), pp.287~306 (1989)
- Graff, Gerald, "Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society" (1979), U of Chicago P
- "Henry Louis Mencken", Encyclopedia Britannica Online, ~ (2022)
- "Heywood Brown", Encyclopedia Britannica Online, ~ (2022)
- Hutcheon, Linda, "Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox" (2013), Wilfrid Laurier UP
- Jablon, Madelyn, "Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in African American Literature" (1997), U of Iowa P
- Kang, Younghill, "East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee" (1997), Kaya Production
- a and Asian American Fictions, "Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino", pp.2003, Lee, A. R
- Lee, Sunyoung, "East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee", pp.375~395 (1997), Kaya Production
- Ling, Jinqi, "Narrating Nationalisms: Ideology and Form in Asian-American Literature" (1998), Oxford UP
- Lowe, Lisa, "Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics" (1996), Duke UP
- Lewis, Sinclair, "Dodsworth" (1929), Modern Library
- Lewis, Sinclair, "Elmer Gantry" (2007), Signet
- Peters, Joan D, "Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution of the British Novel" (2002), UP of Florida
- Scholes, Robert, "Fabulation and Metafiction" (1979), U of Illinois P
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, "Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader", pp.66~111 (1994), Columbia UP
- Thompson, Ralph, "Books of the Times", New York Times, ~ (1937)
- Vonnegut, Kurt, "Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel" (2019), Dial
- Waugh, Patrica, "Metafiction: Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction" (1993), Routledge
- Woolf, Virginia, "A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas" (2014), William Collins
- "Yon Yonson", Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, ~ (2022)