대위법적 문명의 의미 탐색: 헉슬리의 『멋진 신세계』

초록

This paper aims to explore the meaning of 'civilization' often addressed in the Brave New World. It is not until one understands the writer's point-counterpoint narrative that the re/discovery of the civilization in the new world is fully made through a step-by-step approach to the text. Accordingly, the past and present historical meaning of the New Mexican Reservation should be first reviewed to know why Huxley foregrounds the reservation along with the brave new world in the text. Secondly, two episodes will be compared; the past historical episode that Gorillas were exhibited in London in 1861 and the present fictional one that John the Savage from New Mexico Reservation is experimented with as an ape in the zoo. Creating the point-counterpoint narrative quoting or using many of the historical or fictional characters in the novel, Huxley has implicitly led us to rediscover what the real civilization should be like in the future unlike that depicted in the dystopian novel. Huxley seems to suggest the attitudes that T. H. Huxley and Matthew Arnold should have had in their argument as to which one is superior to the other, science or culture/literature; T. H. Huxley should have more valued the culture and literature, and Matthew Arnold the science. In brief, Aldous Huxley argues those two should be integrated into the social and cultural society. Finally Huxley seems to say that it is only when both humanity and science are reciprocally respected that human society would prosper without losing the value of humanity even in the scientific world.

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