서정시의 목소리는 누구/무엇의 것인가?－누구/무엇의 목소리인가?

Abstract

The present study examines the way to combine the intrinsic approach to poetry and extrinsic filed study, which is widely known cultural study. To make both approaches converge, we need to examine the voices in poetry. In poetry, who or what speaks? The ‘lyric self’ has been long considered as an appropriate answer for this question. It is based on the Romantist belief that poetry is the expression of the poet’s emotion and feeling. According to this belief the voice of a ‘lyric self’ can be directly regarded as that of a poet himself. In this case, the whole outer world contracts into the poet’s inner side mind. The world merely exists as the result of the projection of the poet’s mind. New critics had an strong opposition to that idea. So, they suggested the concept of ‘poetic speaker’ or ‘persona’. These concepts imply that who or what speaks in poetry has nothing to do with the poet himself. They suggest we focus on a individual poem, and the dramatic situation in a poem. As a result, they closely examine the speaker’s role and attitude in a poem. In that case, the outer atmosphere and cultural backgrounds, which might be closely related with a making of a poem, are totally excluded. Metaphorically speaking, ‘the poetic speaker’ or ‘the persona’ builds his own world in a vacuum. With these two concepts, we cannot go further in analyzing and explaining poetry. It is necessary to designate the spot in a poem where the inner voice and outer cultural backgrounds converge. Right in this sense, we need to consider the voices in poetry as the voices of ‘poetic subjects’, as the very spots where various contexts and discourses are crossed and knotted. Through the concept of ‘poetic subject’, we can unveil the voices in poetry along the inner textual flow and under the outer cultural backgrounds. By that way, we can make a poem develop from within toward nets of abounding contexts and discourses.