근대기 한 반가 출신 여성의 생애 경험과 기록 - 정명현의 생애가사를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Myeonghyeon Jeong's narratives of her life experiences were her biographical records which she was faced with in the middle of fluctuations of modern times such as the Japanese Occupation of Korea, the Liberation of Korea from it, the Korean Civil War and modernization. This study is part of research on discourse aspects of life experience narratives, taking notice of the fact that Myeonghyeon Jeong repeatedly wrote about her life experiences in important cycles of her life. Though life experience narratives are personal biographies, this study emphasizes that these narratives were based on personal socio-cultural identities, securing a kind of typicality, and that it is necessary to deal more meaningfully with these old prosodic narratives -‘GASA of life’- written by a woman of modern times in modern Korean literary history. It is notable to see how the age of modern times, which was a new concept of the time, could match or contrast with the old literary genre, GASA. Myeonghyeon Jeong wrote about her separation from her family, her husband's untimely death, and the unbearable hardships of life. She showed her selected memories of those experiences in her four works. Her life experience narratives were significantly different from other biographical narratives by contemporary female writers in the way of structuring and embodying her selections of memories and using memories themselves to create the narratives. It is thought that this was not only because her life experiences were very unique but because she learned eagerly to write‘GASA’and recognized the historical realities in her own way with excellent literary talents. She was so badly off that she moved thirty six times in forty years. Nevertheless, she never ceased writing GASAs, which showed her self-respect as a person from a noble family. The fact that she wrote four narratives of life experiences showed that she was very desperate for her true identity. Also, her desperateness was related to her children. She tried to communicate with her children through her narratives, which revealed her desire to explain her life as mother and to be understood by her children. What was more notable was that her writing of life experience narratives was based on her recognition of the social usefulness and function of literature. Such awareness was the ground on which Myeonghyeon Jeong printed several GASAs in some books which she created and collected during her life. In this respect, Myeonghyeon Jeong can be regarded as a GASA writer of modern times, but it is necessary to wait for criticisms of her other works and her literary activities.