알퐁스 도데와 불평등한 세계문학

Abstract

For a long time in Korea, Alphonse Daudet’s “The Last Lesson (La Dernière Classe)” was widely read as a symbol of lingual and ethnic solidarity in reference to Korean history, in which the Korean language was lost and recovered during the colonial period. However, the problems of original work－the history of oppressive colonial rule against people, concealment of the fact that resources had been stolen, and complete wipeout of the existence of the mother tongue－were not captured. In Japan, “The Last Lesson” was translated by incorporating the country’s victories in the Russo-Japanese War and W.W.I and highlighting patriotic ideology. Choi Nam-seon, the first person to translate “The Last Lesson” into Korean, connected the original’s elements of war and patriotic narration with the will to achieve independence and the historicity of the March 1st Independence Movement. A series of translations of “The Last Lesson” were produced during the liberation period of Korea and were included in government-designated textbooks as they built linguistic nationalism through the inseparable relationship between nation and national language. On the other hand, Jeon Jae-gyeong dramatically represented the permanence of the national language by putting “The Last Lesson” in the context of a historic event in which the department of Korean language closed down. “The Last Lesson”, which brought unique imaginations in Korean translations, showed not only that world literature in East Asia is not uniform and fair with the original, but also that it is a fruit of historical practices.