근대 ‘문학’의 문자주의와 전통 ‘시가’의 가창성 -『소년 』의 글-시가 배치를 중심으로-

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the establishment of the concept of modern literature and its relation to traditional poetry. In particular, this paper focuses on how the song-like characteristics of traditional poetry and the singing community it has created are embedded in the modern writing–reading relationship. This is not to regard traditional poetry as the developmental cause of modern literature or as a field that developed independently from modern literature; rather, it is seen as a foundational background that integrates the twofold task of the modern literary concept of forming the national and individual subjects. In other words, it needs to be considered as a structural cause behind literalism, that is, as an absent cause and a structural cause that simultaneously endanger the text while being connoted within it. To this end, this paper examines the relationship between the modern subject and traditional poetry in Sonyeon. In scientific writing that emulates the question-and-answer style of writing from the Enlightenment period, the combination of that style with the traditional poems that are inserted recreates an imagined singing community. However, imaginative recreation reinforces the writing subject’s isolation, leading the writer to insert communal cultural codes into their writing to realize collectivity. The subject’s experiential perspective is abstracted in the form of past communal customs, and consequently, the modern writer fails to acquire their “own” perspective, relying instead on externality, that is, the traditional auditory world, to establish themselves. In this light, the composition of singing intervenes in establishing the modern writing subject. The inner self is expressed with the help of songs from the past, and only through these songs can the inner self be revealed. Accordingly, the empathy of readers who know the songs is confirmed through “singing.” The individual as a literary subject thus becomes one that uses their voice to evoke the collective subject that constitutes the singing community and, in this context, serves as the “contemporaneity” that connects past traditions and future plans in their current position. Although the contemporaneity a travel essay writer generates may seem personal because it is based on their experience, it can actually perform a historical dual task as a collective subject. In this light, the singing relationship, that is, the relationship between the singer and the listener, is embedded in the writer–reader relationship. The singer-listener relationship becomes mutual through the spontaneity of sounds, and although sounds may soon disappear, the mutual relationship it creates survives. This is because the writer-reader relationship inspires “my” writing and is embedded in a relationship with the readers that “I” forged as the writing subject.