<유충렬전>의 감성과 가족주의

Abstract

Yuchungryeoljeon is a Korean classical novel which two narrative intentions of scene description and story development conflict each other. It shows aspects of shift between "What a Heaven is unconscious!" and "How Heaven is unconscious!" The former has more functions than the latter. In the course of narration narrative causality and rationality sometimes disappears. In each scenes the characters lament, grudge and rage with overflowing emotions. After those scenes the next stories are continued. This novel is filled with emotions of lament, grudge and rage without concerning hero and antagonist or major and minor character. The characters go to extremes in advance with storing up the emotions in mind at dead ends. At that time the utterance of "What a Heaven is unconscious!" comes out by narrator. It may arouse public sympathies. The characters, narrator, and the public are overrun by emotional flood. Hero of this novel which is naturally a heroic story always acts with consciousness of his family. It is this novel's characteristic that hero's main mission is protecting of family and succession of lineage so familism founds on heroism. The heroism bases on the passion for liberation from social suppressions and the familism becomes the last stronghold for lives of the public who have experienced family-dispersion by wars or famines. Therefore the familism comes not from author's introspections but completed value itself. By viewpoint of this blind familism the other values devaluated. The image of which hero runs through into the world of negative emotions summarizes this novel's popularity. With this image we can have in mind the emotion-overflowed public who thought that family is only one stronghold in suppressed social situations in the latter part of Choseon period. Yuchungryeoljeon is a popular heroic novel to appeal spouting of suppressed emotions and absorption in fictions.