중심과 주변간의 경계 허물기

Transgressing the Boundary Between Center and Margin: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels from Postcolonial Perspectives

Aphra Behn was the first woman in England to make a successful career as one of the earliest English novelists. Her best known work, Oroonoko or the Royal Slave(1688) has been recognized as a seminal work in the tradition of antislavery writings. Behn advanced the cause of abolitionism when she created the first literary portrayal of the noble savage, Oroonoko. Gulliver's Travels(1721) by Jonathan Swift also critiques colonialist ideology. The personal colonizing process of which Gulliver is victim is suggested in his voyages to Lilliput, Brodingnag, and Houyhnhnms. In direct conflict with himself and his own kind, Gulliver assimilates into foreign cultures. The two texts, I believe, are especially interesting test cases for postcolonial perspectives. In this paper, I hope to explore the relation between the Imperial 'self' and the native 'other,' since an institutionalized discourse of the "Other" is a hot issue for the political agenda of colonization. In Oroonoko, the black male protagonist can only speak through the white female writer. In the marginal position of a woman in a patriarchal colonial society, she never seems to criticize slavery directly; From an elitist focus, she only describes the fate of an African prince. Gulliver's Travels, in contrast, reflects that Swift's or Gulliver's struggles against colonization is a distinctly novelistic device. As the slave theme, for Swift, is described in a more complicated and deeper level than Behn's, it provides an opportunity for exercise in satirical prowess. In conclusion, the two texts reveal colonial exploitations and British colonizing practices. Both Behn and Swift, in different ways, thunder against the brutality and malfeasance of the institution of slavery.