<흥부전>의 ‘가난’ 다루기

Abstract

Park-heung-bo-jeon, one of variants of Heung-bu-jeon, concentrates it's attention on protagonist, Heung-bo's severe poverty and manipulates it very specific ways. First half of the work deals with Heung-bo's serious poverty, later half of the work manipulates the settlement of that poverty. In point that whole of the work focus on the poverty, Park-heung-bo-jeon occupies a specific place in korea's poverty literature. We can find specific ways of manipulation the poverty in Park-heung-bo-jeon. The work presents repeatedly Heung-bo's poor appearances, but raises its interest by manipulating it with different viewpoints. And the work shows sorrow of poverty with exaggeration and humor instead of realistic manners. And the work includes the poverty consciousness that it will be overcome some time or other. The work intents to weaken pains of poverty through this humorous descriptive technique and the general public optimistic hopes on poverty. We can understand the work's principle meaning through the way of settlement of that poverty. Heung-bo was very good man, but lives in severe poverty. If this good man like Heng-bo can't resolve his poverty, we must be frustrated because it injures the man's right to live. Therefore, Heung-bo should settle the poverty in order to keep his right to live. It is the reason that the work has settled poverty with the swallow's gourd as a repayment of kindness. Park-heung-bo-jeon dealt the poverty not with the realistic manner but with fantastic one. This point suggests that the poverty can't be settled in reality, but it should be settled to satisfy the general public hopes. Appearance of the swallow's gourd in the work is a kind of a narrative device to satisfy the general public optimistic hopes on poverty.