언문소설의 문화적 위치와 문자적 근대의 역설 - 근대초기 ‘춘향전’의 매체 변이와 표기문자ㆍ독자층의 상호관련성 -

Abstract

The (old) novel written in eonmun had been formed a cultural position as a representative public genre from the 19th century to early modern period. It had been embraced diverse literary genres of upper and low classes, and the readers had been enjoyed both level of classes by reading eonmun-novel which had realized cultural competence like complexity and polyphony. In the viewpoint of cultural position, the readers of the novel were regarded as sub-cultural subjects, not as a main stream. The perspective toward them was consistently negative. However, paradoxically an activated publishing situation in the late Joseon period and severe criticism from the literati on the novel had been proved its general popularity. Lots of implied literary genres in novel weren’t cited the original version written in hanmun nor their literal translated version in eonmun. They were totally changed and inserted in eonmun-novel. In short, the implied genres in the novel were invented as forms of novel style. This meant that a genre of novel had cultural/literary competence which represented the contemporary daily life and biographical story with eonmun as a script. At the same time, it meant the public could experience the cultural things of high society and low class embracively by reading eonmun-novel. On the other hands, we can see that there was working some specific cultural recognition in the fictional genre; it was impossible to discern what was the high culture and vulgar one. This paper explained the cultural/literary meaning of the context of the hybrid script systems (eon-hanmun, eonmun-centric system with attaching hanmun supportively) with the concept of ‘paradox of modernization’ based on the essential cultural competence of eonmun-novel and the great support and sympathy from the public.