신화에 나타난 비극적 세계상과 그 서사적 전개 - 『삼국사기』 및 『삼국유사』 소재 설화를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The essay is focused upon investigating the origin of our tragedy in the ancient myth which are recorded in Samguksagi and Samgukyusa. Like the Greek myth, our tragedy began from myth, too. There is an irony which has the worldly universality that a tragedy of experiencing the division of a self and the world stems from a myth of unifying the two. In reality, however, the unifying orientation of Korean myth is fundamental and overall. Gods in Greek myth have the initiative through their struggles, whereas Gods in Korean myth are described as pictures of realizing a unity of heaven and earth, yin and yang, male and female, etc. In the latter, therefore, the dualistic recognition of revealing in characters of being sacrificed in the process of unifying so is absorbed into such an ultimate process to be buried in oblivion. The thinking way of this unification is that of archetype for making up the characteristics of Korean tragedy. To get the tragic, a narrative has to warrantee characters' vindication. Unlike the characters of the Western tragedy, those of the Korean tragedy are warranteed their vindication in the mutual relationship of several characters. The conflicts in these networks of relationship are focused upon ideology, and so the characters are described as those of having royalty to the upper classes and the country. Thus, there is a trend that a pendulum of tragedy swings toward sublimity. And people in general think much of sympathy and so have an inclination of sinking into grief. Nevertheless, sublimity and grief used to be balanced, in that the upper people and the lower had respectively different positions concerning the same event and, furthermore, there was the dual structure of conflicting the narrative by combining the upper people's interpretation of editing and the lower people's imagination.