‘香娘’을 형상화하는 두 가지 방식 -향랑전과 향랑전설

Abstract

This thesis is a comparative research into the ways of describing "Hyang-rang" in Hyang-rang biography and Hyang-rang legend. Hyang-rang was a 17-years-old commoner who lived in Sunsan, Kyungsangbuk-do of latter Chosun dynasty. Her step mother and her husband treated her badly and her uncle urged her to remarry. She drowned herself as she didn't want remarry and nobody would like to live with her. To hear her death, 10 male writers wrote her biography to honour her faithfulness. In their biographies, The death of Hyang-rang was 'systematized' in the context of provincial faithful tradition and Hyang-rang was described as the incarnation of Confucian ethics. Distinctively, in the legend, there was romanticism instead of such faithfulness. In the legendary world, Hyang-rang was good, pretty and poor girl and just a victim of the feudal family system. So she was a person not for reverence but sympathy. These differences generally mean the differences between biography and legend. But the important things are two viewpoints have struggled from then on and the viewpoint of the legend provides us more balanced eye for "Hyang-rang".