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Abstract

In Korea’s modern literary tradition, the biological sex of female poets has been clearly indicated by the narrator. Not only is this two-gender dichotomy problematic, but it is limiting and even distorting in that poetic interpretation is possible only after the sex of the narrator is known. In the case of novels, it is possible to discover the character’s sex naturally within the context unless there is an intentional refusal to reveal the sex. On the other hand, in poetry, it is possible to discover the sex only when the narrator or the subject is deliberately revealed. That is, the sex of the poetic narrator in a female poet’s work is in general taken as female without any problem or satisfactory explanation despite lacking sufficient information to tell the sex within the context of the poem. Once the sex/gender of a hitherto unclear narrator, ‘I,’ is declared female, the poem begins to be interpreted properly and recorded within the genealogy of women’s literature. While the range of interpretative possibilities for male poets is wide, female poets are always considered as expressing women’s words and a woman’s body, while their resistance must be interpreted as arising from a patricidal urge. If any of the female poets transcends these boundaries, would her poems be given any value? Even though this involves the issue of the distinction between the poet and her poems, the main reason the sex of female poets has figured more prominently than that of other authors in other genres may be the deep-seated habit of treating women in literature as essentially biologically defined beings. The powerful fantasy that women share similar bodies and possess a common set of experiences has created an imagined group by way of substantiation and identification. This essay raises the issue that the poems of female authors are imprisoned in the notion of a biological sex called “women” even though poetry need not reveal the sex of the narrator or subject within the text, while proposing a new way of reading women’s literature. More specifically, it will examine the way women’s biological sex has worked in modern poetry reading with a focus on the early poems of Choi, Seung-ja in the 1980s. In addition, it will critically review how feminism has interpreted female poetry and the achievements and limitations of this process. It will also seek new ways of reading modern poetry by examining how the metaphors of femininity have “edited” and “reduced” the female body. If women’s literature can function as the fulcrum of a revolution shaking up the established order of Korean literature, and if the poems of Choi (or, for that matter, any poem that cannot be classified within the straitjacket of “1980s women’s poetry”) can be accepted into the literary mainstream, then they must usher in a whole new way of criticism and interpretation. If the emergence of the issue of gender in the literary tradition is indeed due to the existence of women poets, we will be able to see future problems of literary history through the prism of women’s literature and seek a new ethical path that can recalibrate the role of literature.