Silence, Shamans and Traumatic Haunting: A Novel and Accompanying Exegesis
Files
Date
2017
Authors
Hooton, Matthew James
Editors
Advisors
Jose, Nicholas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Thesis
Citation
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
Major Work: Typhoon Kingdom In 1653, the Dutch East India Company’s Sparrowhawk is wrecked on a Korean island, and Hae-jo, a local fisherman, guides the ship’s bookkeeper to Seoul in search of his surviving shipmates. The two men, one who has never ventured to the mainland and the other unable to speak the language, are soon forced to choose between loyalty to each other and a king determined to maintain his country’s isolation. Three hundred years later, in the midst of the Japanese occupation, Yoo-jin is taken from her family and forced into prostitution, and a young soldier must navigate the Japanese surrender and ensuing chaos of the Korean War to find her. Based on the seventeenth-century journal of Hendrick Hamel and testimonies of surviving Korean “Comfort Women,” “Typhoon Kingdom” connects two narratives through an examination of language, foreignness and traumatic haunting. The novel seeks to make a unique creative contribution to the small body of literature in English representing the diverse and traumatic experiences of Korean “Comfort Women” and the tumultuous history of the Korean peninsula. Exegesis: Writing at the Intersection of Trauma and Haunting: Narrative Representations of Korean “Comfort Women” in English An examination of narrative representations of the traumatic experiences of Korean “Comfort Women” that explores a new way of reading and writing about literatures on the subject. Chapter One provides an historical context examining events and their forgetting. Chapter Two presents shamanic performance as a seemingly eruptive and counter-hegemonic force that transcends the familiar confines of ritual to enact a communal memory and provide a means of engagement with historical trauma and its ghosts. And Chapter Three asks how Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life exemplify the unsettling power of writing at this intersection of trauma and haunting.
School/Discipline
School of Humanities : English and Creative Writing
Dissertation Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2017
Provenance
This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals
Description
Vol. 1 Typhoon Kingdom: Major Work -- Vol. 2 Writing at the Intersection of Trauma and Haunting: Narrative Representations of Korean “Comfort Women” in English: Exegesis