There is some difference between Cat's Eye (1988) and Atwood's earlier novels. Whereas the main characters in them remain a victim, the protagonist in Cat's Eye shifts from a victim to an assailant. The question now arises: what is the thing which Atwood wants to describe by using this kind of shifting? Whereas an attribute of Elaine, the protagonist in Cat's Eye, shifts in this way, Elaine's relationship with her friend Cordelia also shifts from the victim-assailant to the assailant-victim one. If the relationship of the two did not change, Elaine would accept a kind of power relationship with Cordelia. But because of their relationship changing, Elaine comes to judge what Cordelia said and did, not emotionally but rationally. (Elaine used to judge Cordelia emotionally in facing her so that Elaine often got angry at what Cordelia said.) Furthermore, not looking Cordelia in the eye allows Elaine to be able to think about various things rationally. Then finally she is able to grasp the essence of things. Thus we see that by using this kind of shifting, Atwood makes Elaine grasp the inner meaning of the phenomenon.

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Transforming the fragmentary episodes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet into a neatly crafted comedy, the Czech-born British dramatist Tom Stoppard demonstrates a vivid sense of metatheatricality by showing a mise-en-abyme structure and tragedians in his debut play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967; hereafter cited as R&G). Although self-reference is one of the notable features of Stoppardian dramas such as The Real Inspector Hound (1968), Travesties (1974), and The Real Thing (1982), R&G repeatedly uses these highly theatrical devices as a playful vehicle for having the audience waver in perceiving the exact limit between fiction and reality within this play. The central aim of this article is to examine such metatheatrical aspects of R&G with a reference to Man, Play and Games (Les jeux et les hommes, 1958) by the French sociologist Roger Caillois. It is well-known that Caillois presented four basic elements of games: agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (role-playing), and illinx (vertigo). Although very few have referred to Caillois's game study for analyzing R&G, this approach shall help us reveal that role-playings within this drama, which questions the stability of perception of the spectators, has a crucial function to cause temporal vertigos in their minds, and to make them share a sense of uncertainty with the unfortunate protagonists.

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In 1798, William Wordsworth wrote "The Old Cumberland Beggar (OCB)" included in The Lyrical Ballads, and in 1802, he composed "Resolution and Independence (RI)". There poems show some similarities. The first similarity pertains to the figure of the main character. In these poems, Wordsworth depicts an old man who belongs to a lower class. In spite of their class, these men have an honorable spirit and merge with the nature of the Lake District. The second similarity of these poems is the context of the narrator. The character of both narrators is not detailed by Wordsworth, but they are projected by the poet himself. In addition, the narrators differ in their sympathy for the old. The narrator of OCB tries to protect the beggar's freedom from the Poor Laws, although he never speaks to him nor does he interact with him directly. On the other hand, the narrator of RI tries to speak to the leech gatherer, being inspired by him. When readers compare the narrators of the two poems, they can understand the change in Wordsworth's attitude to the old men as the characters of his poems. In OCB, he is only an observer, but in RI, he learns to participate in the poems and speak with the character created using the power of his imagination.

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This paper aims to show that Byron tries to give a new interpretation of Cain in Genesis. The protagonist in Cain is possessed by despairs, which Kierkegaard would call "the sickness unto death." His Faustian impulse, which is the desire to get the ultimate knowledge, would result from the anxiety where he cannot identify who he is in the world. Yet, by having knowledge beyond the human realm, he would break a Christian taboo: he would commit the sin of pride, which is one of the seven deadly sins. It is natural that the protagonist such as Cain should be cast into Hell as Satan in Paradise Lost in the traditional Christian view. However, if the Christian conception of good and evil should overturn as in the Nietzschean thought, the protagonist's anxiety would become existentialistic. In analyzing Byron's Cain in comparison with the philosophy of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, this paper tries to see Byron not as one of the later Romantics but rather as a pre-existentialistic poet.

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This paper investigates the relationship of female gender with property rights and agency of writing in late eighteenth-century America and how this issue is reflected in the "sympathetic" personalities of two female characters-Constantia Dudley and Sophia Westyn-in Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond; or, The Secret Witness. This novel foregrounds the significance of sisterly sympathy through descriptions of compassionate behaviors of the female protagonist, Constantia, and her final protection by the female narrator, Sophia. The dynamism of constructing their images, however, contains within itself components threatening to their images. The components stem both from the eponymous character, Ormond, whose excessive reliance on rationality is described as moral barrenness and from the work itself, Ormond, through which Sophia's personality is also constructed in an epistolary manner. Ormond represents the socioeconomic framework of post-revolutionary America, and Constantia's sympathetic image is undermined when she is positioned within a house he gave her-the sphere that embodies the sway of his trespassing rational discourses. Ormond's reins of opinion over Constantia try to convert her into his metaphorical property. Sophia's agency of writing, which constructs her "good" feminine personality, inadvertently shows its similar discourse network to Ormond. Her writing, ironically titled Ormond, reveals her "masculine" treatment of Constantia and the dubious strategy of the construction of her own literary personality. This study aims to reveal the gender politics inherent to the management of property and the authorial power over writing in late eighteenth-century America through the two female characters.

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'Gentrification' is a process in which a working-class or a vacant area of a city center transforms into middle-class residential or commercial district. The middle-class people who have migrated to those areas are called 'gentrifiers'. In the 80s, because it came to be widely understood that this process contributed to the rise in rents and the displacement of low-income residents, the resistance against 'gentrification' grew in intensity. East Village, the setting of Rent, was very famous for this resistance. There is, however, interesting difference between the resistance in Rent and that of East Village. Jonathan Larson, the author, does not depict, as a main character, local people in this musical, who were, of course, leading players in the actual resistance. The participants in his version of the resistance were only so called 'pioneer gentriflers'. At the early stage of 'gentrification', 'pioneer gentrifiers' move into deteriorated areas. The influx of these people makes socially, culturally mixed and exciting communities. At the same time, though, it can cause the upward pressure on rents, and then, full-scale gentrification begins, which, in turn, displaces not only local people but also lower income 'pioneer gentrifiers'. In this thesis, I will consider what the author really wants to represent in this musical. He does not try to depict the resistance against the East Village gentrification itself. What he wants to depict is his ideal version of gentrification, which would make communities more energetic and exciting.

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