세 개의 수사로 바라본 구텐베르크의 은하계 - 맥루한의 실(복)낙원, 문해력 탐색과 구원의 신앙

Gutenberg’s Galaxy Reexamined through Three Rhetorical Devices : McLuhan’s Paradise Lost and Regained, Exploring Literacy and Faith in Salvation

This paper reinterprets Marshall McLuhan’s major works through the three rhetorical devices of metaphor, allegory, and irony. These rhetorical devices reveal the critical aspects of McLuhan’s life journey, marked by his insightful and creative use of English literature. In particular, McLuhan’s views on media are examined through the metaphor of “paradise lost and paradise regained.” Under the framework of the loss of paradise and the restoration of the lost paradise, literary texts in his writings work as “fables of identity.” His life and ideas are filled with a series of ironies that deviate from the original meaning he believed electronic technology would provide to humanity. The acts of reading and writing require cultural literacy, for diverse forms of texts are not merely repositories of information, but also training grounds for deciphering the symbolic systems formed through history and culture.