신채호의 역사전기소설에 나타난 탈식민성 연구

Abstract

The moment when the Korean national word ‘Min Jok’ started to be used in modern concept was earlier than 1905 or later. That time, the enlightenment period's neo-Confusian intellectuals were committed to forming national narratives and demonstrating willful spirits to make their country safe from other races' oppression by way of protesting against the oppression of Japanese imperialism. One of the most important things that they did for national narratives and subversive freedom of oppression, through their historical narratives of Korean heroes, is to awaken Korean people’s national consciousness benumbed or distorted by the imperialists' colonial strategies and to heal it. Shin also tried to maintain national spirit in spite of loss of national sovereignty. The focus of the national discourse in the early modern Korea was on the restoration of national culture in order to be free from ‘Sino centrism’, China’s policy to emphasize its political-cultural-racial superiorities neglecting its boundaries. However, the attempt in early modern Korea put its focus on freedom from the Chinese centrists’ culture, not from the Japanese colonists’. In this tendency, what the nationalist Shin also regarded China as a colonist and produced the subversive discourse of its centrism shows his postcolonial perspectives to heal oppressed Koreans. This study explores the contextual relation of Shin's thought and narrative centering around historic and biographic novels, such as <The Lives of Eul Ji Moon Duk>, <The Lives of Lee Soon Shin>, and <The Lives of a Chief Commander Choi>. These lives of Shin's early own writing, through the process of recreating heroic narratives, shows that the writer distinctively reflects the voice of subversive discourse on his writing.