욕망화된 사물읽기: Thing Theory와 선정소설

Abstract

To put it simply, thing theory is a study of meaningful capacities of materiality. Although T. S. Eliot regarded pathetic fallacy as the bad example of objective correlatives in his modernism poetry theory, it is clear that many objects in literary works reflect diverse human desires. Among many, Victorian sensation novels are the most distinct genre where the various paraphernalia in them indicate the distorted and exaggerated greed of the industrial revolution era. Whereas the male protagonists are usually related with the norms objects of authority such as portrait and locket, the female characters’ connection with cosmetics and white dress shows their oppressed and fragile position in the patriarchal and hierarchical society. In the (post)modern society, the ambiguity of things has grown rapidly due to the increasing discrepancy between objects and things. In special, the new journalism and the psychological realism novels often reveal the post-truth phenomenon because consumerized audience depend more upon the attraction and affect than the mere evidence and facts. For the individual, according to object relations theory, these alternative facts are rather internalized into their mind as the internal object when they are motivated by the non/contact with primary caregivers in their childhood. The dominant material imagery in (post)modern fiction becomes the site of resistance because of their reconstructed and extended meaning. The object relations theory and thing * Hannam University 78 영미문화 제18권 2호theory can be effectively used to uncover the complicated meanings of desired objects by using the human-object’s meaningful relations and early mental images that are secretly alive still in the present. Key