pISSN: 1598-3293
영어영문학연구, Vol.63 no.1 (2021)
pp.95~114
『최후의 인간』에 나타난 키아즘 연구
The purpose of this paper is to study a specific narrative structure and the Other in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man by using the Chiasm. Chiasm is a concept of philosophy of the body which states that the interrelation of humans and other objects cannot be separated by quantum physics. On one hand, chiasm has been studied as a way of interpreting the Bible in theology. The bible’s chiasm(symmetrical parallelism) is a structure consisting of a, b, c, b’, a or a, b, c, b’, a’ which contain the most important story in the middle. Mary Shelly’s The Last Man is the apocalyptic structure that interprets the Bible, which not only serves as an analytical framework that emphasizes the theme in the literary narrative structure, but also as a reversible method that makes the end of mankind the start. On the other hand,, Merleau-Ponty makes this concept crucial in his writing “Chiasm of the Flesh”, as he believes that the body and the world overlap by means of sensation, which bridges us and the Other through an intersubjective relation; we feel the world because it feels us. In other words, we and the world are intertwined, just as everything in this world. In conclusion, studying The Last Man from the two perspectives of chiasm can best describe the narrative structure of the novel, and how Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm is an unconditional hospitality to the Other, which includes the definition of “being”.
키아즘,살,전염병,타자,가역성