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영어

In John Fowles’s The Collector, the conflict between a Few who sees human life as an artist’s work and a Many who sees it as a reproducible product is drawn in one space. Clegg who represents the Many can be considered as a commercial novelist while Miranda who represents the Few, as an artist. The Collector does not show the aspect of overcoming the contradiction of abstract space through mutual understanding and harmony between a Few and a Many. It only shows the contradictory situation of modern society where abstract space is overwhelming, such as photographs and butterfly specimens symbolizing automatic reproduction, through the rural house. Miranda’s death by Clegg reveals that the absence of differential space is reality. The Collector paradoxically depicts the fact that we must face the reality, overcome the contradiction of space, and aim for the differential space. It can be linked to Fowles’s worries about novels, worries that can go beyond the separation between repetitive and reproducible products and unique works of art, even if they are contradictory. Fowles's troubles about the paradoxical relationship between life and art are revealed through the allegory of contradictory space in The Collector.