현대비평의 수립, 혹은 통설의 탄생-1959년 백철과 강신재의 논쟁에 주목하며-

Abstract

This research approaches the situation of the literary field after the Korean War from a gender point of view. It focuses on an argument in 1959, which was short but impressive. Kang, Shin-Jae, a young female writer, disputed Paek, Cheol's criticism about her fiction, The Cliff. Paek, Cheol, the critic, diminished Kang's work because it was a personal, female story which didn't show an awareness of time, and contained many problems in the rhetorical sentences. Therefore, he insisted that her work lacked a sense of quality and reality. However, Kang, Shin-Jae refuted the critic's misunderstanding and disparagement of her work. This is important because it was a fundamental question in the direction of criticism and, moreover, the women's critical commentary that was absent from the process of modern criticism. Modern Korean literary criticism is a product of constant controversy and is considered to be the outcome of the struggle for the recognition by generations of critics. However, the process of the generational conflict and the recognition struggle between the new generation critics of 1955 and the 4･19 generation critics of the 1960s are all defined by the genealogy of the father-son narrative which both have in common: ‘young’, ‘male’ and ‘elite’. Ultimately, the shift of hegemony among male critics in terms of the discussion of the subject of modernization was a closed oedipus lineage for women. In particular, Paek, Cheol established a new type of literature, which was characterized by the superiority of the intellect which overpowers the emotion, and the superiority of the critique over the creation. In fact, in the 1950s, the breakthrough of women was exceptionally prominent during the era of the postwar turmoil and the virtual absence of the patriarch in Korean society. At this time, the task of national reconstruction led by the intellectuals included the recovery of the patriarchal order. The literary discourse reflexed this new order. In the process, women writers, such as Kang, Shin-Jae who appeared after the war, were unable to belong to the new generation in the modern age. Since the discourse of contemporary criticism was preempted by a male critic(writer), women intellectuals(writers) were forced to make themselves heard in their works by using “ventriloquism”. For Korean women writers, the knowledge of modern criticism and the establishment of a literary field was the birth of a negative legacy, a universal, standard literature.