나, 우리, 민중 - 조태일 민중시의 시적 주체

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the rhetorical difficulties inherent in the Minjung poetry by focusing on Cho Tae-il’s poems and poetics. When examining the figure of Minjung while paying attention to the practicality of the Minjung poetry, what stands out important is the use of the first-person speakers ‘I’ and ‘we’. This paper examines the rhetorical characteristics of Cho Tae-il’s Minjung poems in the 1970s. In the series of ‘Sikalon’(theory of the knife) and ‘My Virginity’ in Sikalon, the declaration of ‘I’ is carried out, sharply opposed to the anti-Minjung. In these texts, qualities of Minjung converge into a singular first-person instruction ‘I’. However, it can be detected that the form of major poetic subjects changes from Kukto(national territory). In particular, in a series of ‘Kukto’ poems, the poetic subject ‘I’ expands to ‘we’ to represent the plurality of the Minjung, and at this time, ‘we’-speech serves as a practice sentence that construct the Minjung socially, not a description of the existing Minjung. These rhetorical difficulties arising from the representation of ‘I’ and ‘we’ lead to continuous writing because it can never complete to represent. Therefore, Cho Tae-il’s writing is an important example of Minjung poetry in the 1970s and 1980s in that it was a record of rhetorical adventures surrounding the poetic subject of Minjung poetry.