한문학에 나타난 ‘고래’에 대한 인식과 그 문학적 형상

Abstract

This paper enlightened how to understand the whale as what type of animals and how to describe them in the documents written in Chinese character during the premodern. What this paper discussed are as followings. In Chapter 2, firstly this paper looked for what the whale’s image was described in the literary works. According to this examination, mostly the whale was described as the fierce animal or the existence that behaves incorrectly. In particular, it is an interesting point that Japanese pirates were frequently called the whales in the literary works. On the other hand, the whale was oppositely understood. For instance, the whale was regarded as the existence who was killed or persecuted by treacherous people. In addition, the whale was often understood as the animal that conferred a benefit on people or that was ridden by Taoist hermits. In Chapter 3, this paper examined how to whales were described in the literary works when writers caught sight of whales personally. The contents documented in the literary works divided as three parts such as whale-hunting, whale-cutting, and whale-watching. About whale-hunting, there was no documents written based on bearing witness but based on hearing from Japanese or watching whale-hunting by Japanese. Meanwhile, the cutting scene of whales that died and drifted towards shore were commonly described in the literary works. In addition, the feelings when watching whales on the ship or on the shore were described in the literary works. After reading the literary works documented whales, this paper found that whales were depicted as gigantic and energetic existences, and were given various images. Overall, in the literary works, whales were described as the tragic existences, the scarey objects but they also were described as the existence to confer a benefit on people.