한국애정비극서사의 계보와 미학적 특성

Abstract

This article aimed at showing the tradition and big picture of Korean Love Tragedy novels by integrating the studies of the author of this article. This study was carried out to reveal the relationship among the novels by comparing and contrasting them under the culture-sociological and aesthetic views. The classification from our study is not for schematization, but for integration; hence, we paid attention to relationship rather than classification, and hoped open-minded reading comprehension for them. By the studies carried out before, we got to understand that the concept of strata like the upper layer or lower layer can’t be a clear standard in Love Tragedy unlike in Hero Tragedy. This is because 1)female and male protagonists loving each other live differently in terms of class and situation in many love tragedies, and 2)many high-layer writers reconstructed mythologies that were orally transmitted in the lower layer. Instead, it became a clear standard that which of male and female felt love more desperately because the theme of the novels was love itself. It was highly possible that those who felt love more desperately would be frustrated or sacrificed. Therefore, we classified the novels into female-sacrificed type, male-sacrificed type, and both-sacrificed type by the standard of who felt love more desperately, and then grouped the male-sacrificed and female-sacrificed types as one-side-sacrificed type. Ideology heavily influenced on the characteristics of female-sacrificed-typed novels. When patriarchal ideology played in the novel, this type went from tragedy to a sublime novel. Series about women of chaste reputation belong to this kind of novel. When ideology went weak, tragedy could be established by attacking the weak point of ideology. In male-sacrificed and both-sacrificed tragedies, male protagonists were romanticists and female protagonists were aggressive in the all works of the upper layer and lower layer. Like hero tragedy shows the will of human beings against their destiny, love tragedy also depicts the will of human beings against the obstacles of love. Sacrifice is an expression of will to overcome tragedy.