동아시아 근대번역문학사 시론 - 1930년대까지의 소설을 중심으로

Abstract

The description of the history of East Asian literature requires a framework for grasping the individual history of Korea, China and Japan as a series of continuous flow, or external criteria that can be applied to them in common. When this is possible, a base for comparison comes into being, and self-evident propositions of domestic literature history can also be questioned. This writing is preliminary work therefor, and compared the aspects of the translation of Western modern literature among the East Asian countries. Specifically, it reviewed whether there actually existed what may be called 'East Asian phenomena,' by analyzing the quantitative transition of novel translation on the basis of statistics and the tendency of novel translation by period; and tried to reveal the respective special points of Korea, China, and Japan. To look into the aspects of novel translation up to the 1930s, emphasis on French and Russian novels and the popularity of short-story style may be pointed out as what may be called 'East Asian' phenomena. Here, the aspect of translating Russian novels in the three East Asian countries is a useful indicator that reveals differences among the countries. Particularly, the instances of Korea and China provide an interesting contrast. The translation of Russian novels in Korea went downhill after the mid 1920s, and even a year when no Russian novel was translated appeared in the 1930s. On the other hand, in China, the heydays of Russian novels started in the mid 1920s, and enjoyed a steep upward trend even up to the 1940s. Such a Russian literature-centeredness in China, particularly, the overwhelming prevalence of Russian literature after the 1930s, has as its direct background, the appearance of socialist realism modeled on Russian literature and the predominance of Marxist literary theories; however, the indirect background of the introduction and raised status of the 19th-century Russian literature accumulated up to the May Fourth Movement should also be considered. In the case of Korea, which was much influenced by Russian literature via Japan until the early 1920s, later colonial censorship and ideological suppression put the brakes on the introduction of Russian literature. It was the same with the empire and the colony in that Russian literature itself was defined as dangerous; however, the standard of censorship was more severe in the colony. Like this, if the framework of East Asia is used, it is possible to understand more objectively from where overlapping and segmentation between the literary history of the three countries stemmed, and to detect areas in blind spots, not being limited to reducing the explanation of a specific phenomenon to political or social factors in one country. The study of the history of East Asian modern translated literature has academic significance in that it reaches such discoveries.