백철의 ‘신비평’ 전후, 한국 현대문학비평이론의 냉전적 양상

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the cultural assistance from the United States has influenced South Korea and how theory has been vernacularized after the Korean War, by examining Paek Cheol’s training in the United State in the late 1950s and his introduction and practice of New Criticism. After the liberation of 1945, Paek Cheol has been criticized by both the right and the left due to his conversion to socialism and related literary performance, followed by his cooperation with Japan. Thus, Paek Cheol reclusively isolated himself within academia, focusing only on writing and translating an introduction to literature, the history of Korean literature, literary dictionaries, and the history of world literature. Soon after the war ended, he obtained a chance to publish these works － the history of Korean literature, the history of world literature, contemporary criticism, and literary theories, along with its introductory analysis and index. Paek Cheol introduced New Criticism to South Korea, which he re-discovered through his yearlong training in America between 1957 and 1958, and in this process, he actively utilized the geopolitical aura of the supporting country, America. For Paek Cheol, New Criticism, as a theory originated from America, was in one hand a political shield, but was on the other hand the systematic method that reconstructed the literary field and its academism. It was true that New Criticism in the United States overwhelmed its academia, but it was also true that various criticisms on New Criticism were prevailing by the time Paek Cheol was under his training. For example, New Criticism was criticized for its conservatism that resolved political conflicts by referring history regardless of its time order. New Criticism was also called “Lemon Squeezer,” which ended up with its uselessness and self-satisfaction through the systematic explanation on different ironies and paradoxes. Despite all the criticisms, in Paek Cheol’s point of view, the Korean literary criticism in its re-establishing period was barely in the level of dilettantism, and so New Criticism was an adequate remedy for both the Korean literary field and its education in order to improve the literary formation, which mediated the sensible particularity and the normative order, to the level of knowledge. With this positive idea on New Criticism, Paek Cheol contacted René Wellek, Cleanth Brooks, and W. K Wimsatt, while he was staying in Yale University, and personally met I.A. Richards, A. Tate, J. C. Ransom and so on. By contributing his dialogue with them to the Korean papers and journals, Paek Cheol initiated the debate over New Criticism or the analytical criticism. The translated dialogue between these scholars was something that could be called a theoretical support beyond the cultural aids. In so doing, Paek Cheol tried to make New Criticism not only as one of critical/theoretical methodologies but also as the norm of creation that enabled the Korean literature renovated. What Paek Cheol advocated was neither the literature itself as knowledge, nor the literature that played a role of maintaining balance and order. Paek Cheol did not only consider the past as a historical materialist, but also considered the present as a literary historian. Thinking of South Korea and its nativity, he totalized the analytical criticism under the consideration of human behaviors and history, thus accepting New Criticism not as the purpose but as the ‘process’ of the analytical criticism. With April 19 revolution, Paek Cheol’s methodological acceptance of New Criticism seemed to have a possibility to mediate new history with reality and to totalize analysis, history, formation, and ideas. However, right after the military coup d’etat on May 16, 1961, this possibility became frustrated with his cooperation with the new military regime. With his choice, Paek Cheol’s literary position and his life itself became the object of New Criticism, which was full of ironies and paradoxes. The possibility of New Criticism―the support of theory―to be vernacularized should be now actualized by his next generation, which tried to modify the analytical criticism with their perspectives on historicism and sociology of literature. As such, the syndrome of Eliot after the war was moving to the avid reading of Lukacs György.