영웅소설의 고난 구조와 후대적 변이 양상 - <소대성전>과 <신유복전>을 중심으로

Abstract

One of popular genres of classical novels is heroic fiction, the heroic stories-depicting the process that hero overcomes the given tribulation and punishes the wicked feature- have been very appealing to people in the past. The trend had been continuing even after the printed book became prevalent when the period of block-print books and manuscripts was gone. Some heroic stories were recreated in an effort to satisfy the demands from readers while the heroic stories, once released in block print version, were not changed before their republication. Sinyubokjeon is one of the amended novels for application of the public demands. Most of heroic fictions lay their foundations on the leading characters’ lives. After Sodaeseongjeon was written in the formative period, which simplifies the part of tribulations that the hero experiences, increasingly, the parts portraying the tribulations had not been included in more new fictions which have been highly acclaimed at that tume. However, Sinyubokjeon has a distinction from other heroic novels in the previous generation, it can be clearly seen that the part of tribulations accounts for wider range of the fiction. Sinyubokjeon focuses on arousing readers’ sympathy empathy to the hero by elaborating on the sorrow and the last word three times, whereas there is only a paragraph talking about the tribulation of hero: his parent's death in Sodaeseongjeon. Additionally, Sodaeseongjeon concentrates on describing the heroic aspect of the leading character than dealing with his adverse circumstances in the scene that the character experiences the hardship of mendicancy while Sinyubokjeon tries to arouse readers’ sympathy to the hardship of the leading character caused by solitariness of his live on the street. When it comes to the scenes of the poor treatment against the leading characters by their wives’ families, the tribulations were not severely or extremely portrayed as the leading character of Sodaeseongjeon already realized the talent to overcome the hardship for himself; however, the hardship was described in the far more extreme way in Sinyubokjeon because the leading character whose circumstances seemed to get better is hopelessly being in distress again. In the republication of Sinyubokjeon, expanding the range of distressful circumstances is to perceive and earn more public popularity. Many of people’s demands were reflected on the amended version, which had it focus on sorrowful narration, based on the structure of heroic novels that seems very appealing to people. Various adverse circumstances in the fiction seem more extreme and rough than other heroic fictions at that time, they are also described in detail, this is intended to stimulate readers’ emotion so that they could have sympathy to the character. the heroic fictions, one of genres of classical novels, were read and preferred by various social classes; moreover, the wider range of narration and wider part of describing the adverse circumstances brought the advantageous effect to draw the female readers who accounted for the majority of readers of printed books. Sinyubokjeon is a fiction showing that the writers were committed to making the fictions suitable for the era by actively accepting and reflecting the readers’ views to attract them.