1970년대 문학사회학의 담론 지형

Abstract

This paper focuses on examining at the level of academic history the topography of discourse on sociology of literature that unfolded in Korea in the1970s. In particular, it pays close attention to the context before and after sociology of literature was introduced to the discourse of Korean literature and to which academic current within intellectual and scholarly circles of that time period sociology of literature as a multidisciplinary study came into contact with. Interest in the relationship between literature and society grew after the April 19th student uprising and, within the university system, the demand increased for establishing an identity and scientific validity for the study of “modern Korean literature.” The Western theory introduced to satisfy these demands was sociology of literature. The “Mungi” group began to stress ‘scientific’ and ‘literary’ values in the mid-1960s and embraced structuralism, one consequence of which being that they also actively welcomed and spread Goldmann’s sociology of literature, which borrowed heavily from structuralism. Then, in the 1970s, Goldmann’s genetic structuralism became fused with interest in sociology and came to be narrowly associated with sociology of literature in Korea. In this way, discourse on sociology of literature in Korea was carried out with the intention of distancing literature from the demand of social realities,unlike sociology of literature in the West, which had its roots in Marxist thought. This had the effect of making the “Changbi” group, which promoted the theory of national literature, avoid the use of the term “sociology of literature”, and eventually the discourse on sociology of literature ironically helped create instead a situation that polarized literary and social values.