검은 영혼과 흰 육체: 『 알제의 포로 』에 나타난 미국의 혼종성과 이중적 글쓰기 (Black Soul, White Body: The Hybridity of America and Double-Writing in The Algerine Captive)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국근대영미소설학회
· 수록지 정보 : 근대영미소설 / 14권 / 2호 / 147 ~ 174페이지
· 저자명 : 양석원

초록

A Barbary captivity narrative modeled upon American captives in Algiers in the post-Revolutionary America, Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive both conforms and runs counter to the dominant American ideology that endeavored to establish an American identity clearly distinguished from racial and cultural others. On the one hand, the novel recounts the journey of Updike Underhill as a national narrative in which he aspires to build an American identity by learning the Puritan spirit of freedom and Enlightenment ideas of independence and modernity. Underhill’s journey also embodies American racial hegemony because he sees Muslim Algerines as other from an imperial, colonialist, and orientalist perspective, depreciating them as “ferocious” and “tyrannical” barbarians, and priding himself on his spiritual freedom despite his bodily servitude.
On the other hand, however, the novel demystifies American liberty and independence, debunks the assumptions of American racial discourse, and renders Underhill’s journey not as a process of solidifying American identity but as a process of remolding it as a hybrid one. The Puritan spirit of freedom is drastically undercut since John Underhill, the hero’s Puritan ancestor, is revealed to have been involved in the genocide of Native Americans. American enlightenment is also severely vitiated by those self-professing enlightened Southerners who tyrannically exploit African slaves.
More important, Underhill’s experience in Algerine society undermines the supposed American superiority over Algerine barbarity. Underhill is even attracted to and shares the view of a mullah, thus speaking, though momentarily, from the perspective of the racial and religious other he formerly condemned as infidel and barbarous. Despite his concluding assertion of an American ideological cliché, Underhill’s journey evidences that his American identity is a hybrid one, unavoidably shaped and transformed by the racial and cultural other. And his narrative is a double-writing, giving voice to the other’s position, which discerns a “black soul” in his “white body,” as well as displaying official white American ideology.

영어초록

A Barbary captivity narrative modeled upon American captives in Algiers in the post-Revolutionary America, Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive both conforms and runs counter to the dominant American ideology that endeavored to establish an American identity clearly distinguished from racial and cultural others. On the one hand, the novel recounts the journey of Updike Underhill as a national narrative in which he aspires to build an American identity by learning the Puritan spirit of freedom and Enlightenment ideas of independence and modernity. Underhill’s journey also embodies American racial hegemony because he sees Muslim Algerines as other from an imperial, colonialist, and orientalist perspective, depreciating them as “ferocious” and “tyrannical” barbarians, and priding himself on his spiritual freedom despite his bodily servitude.
On the other hand, however, the novel demystifies American liberty and independence, debunks the assumptions of American racial discourse, and renders Underhill’s journey not as a process of solidifying American identity but as a process of remolding it as a hybrid one. The Puritan spirit of freedom is drastically undercut since John Underhill, the hero’s Puritan ancestor, is revealed to have been involved in the genocide of Native Americans. American enlightenment is also severely vitiated by those self-professing enlightened Southerners who tyrannically exploit African slaves.
More important, Underhill’s experience in Algerine society undermines the supposed American superiority over Algerine barbarity. Underhill is even attracted to and shares the view of a mullah, thus speaking, though momentarily, from the perspective of the racial and religious other he formerly condemned as infidel and barbarous. Despite his concluding assertion of an American ideological cliché, Underhill’s journey evidences that his American identity is a hybrid one, unavoidably shaped and transformed by the racial and cultural other. And his narrative is a double-writing, giving voice to the other’s position, which discerns a “black soul” in his “white body,” as well as displaying official white American ideology.

참고자료

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