김현 初期 批評 연구

Abstract

Kim, Hyun is one of the critics who has given major and enduring influences on literary criticism since the Korean War. He was one of the new generations who experienced a bit affluent society recovered after the tumult of the war. Based on his new and innovative recognition of the zeitgeist he was taking the lead of the struggle against ‘symbolic violence' since the 1960s. The evaluation on his works is still debated as much as his status in Korean literary history. In my view, the first thing that needs to be done is to evaluate his works with more objective point of views. This study will be focused on a close examination of his early works with the need of reevaluation. When he started his career as a critic, Kim, Hyun studied general knowledge about criticism and constructed his own critical point of view. With the formation of his own critical thought he made an array of projected critical works continuously. His starting work as a critic was “Narcissist Poetics”. Based on French symbolist poetics and Atheist- Existentialism, “Narcissist Poetics” was the epistemological cornerstone of his thought on literature. His “A History of Love Affairs,” “A Letter from André Breton to Seo Jung-joo,” “The Reasons of that Light tells,” revealed the intermediate progress to be a maturing critic out of early literary thought. By these works Kim, Hyun expressed his desire to establish innovative literary criticism and showed his great interest to subversive aspects of surrealism and Freudian psychoanalysis. His “Consideration on Criticism” studied histories and objects of criticism, the way how to analyse literary texts with a broad view. This proved that it was the product of his early intellectual exploration and the establishment of his critical view on literature.