近代啓蒙期 ‘國文論’의 樣相과 새로운 主體 形成의 問題에 對하여

Abstract

The period of modern enlightenment from the 1890s to 1910 was characterized by the appearance of numerous discussions related to the ‘national letter’ through various newspapers and magazines. The foremost issue was which letter should be used, and it was nothing but determining priorities between Korean letter and Chinese letter, and the next issue was the correct usage of the Korean letter. Then, after 1905, articles began to bring up sentence-level problems beyond the discussions which had focused on letters. They argued that it was sentence that mattered instead of letter and it was sufficient to write our sentences even if we used Chinese letters. It can be interpreted that the sentence-level discussion that claimed writing based on the syntactic structure of the Korean language gave a thought to a homogeneous principal agent sharing Korean grammar while the letter-centered discussion which sharply confronted use of Chinese letters presumed modern and rational living persons severed from the medieval world. It is also noteworthy that the term ‘national language’ was generally used after 1905.