이태준의 수필론 연구 - '근대적 산문문학'과 '수필'에 대한 이해를 중심으로

Abstract

The modern Korean essay, as a distinct literary form, was established in mid-1930’s. In the 1930's writers not only wrote a lot of essays, but also contributed to establishing the concept of the essay with critics. In particular, Lee Tae-jun, who was one of the significant novelists and essayists in that period, contributed to opening-up of the concept of the essay. The study aims to examine the essay concepts of Lee Tae-jun by comparing them with his comprehension of modern prose literature, especially the novel. For this study, 'Museorok', a collection of essays by Lee Tae-jun and literature from the 'Munjang-Kanghwa', which explains the traits of various prose moalities and composition methods, especilIy literature which indicates the comprehension of prose literature, novel, and essay, will be the objective of this study. Lee Tae-jun emphasized the traits and significance of the 'modern novel' while he criticized the old novel and 'sin-soseoI' as a narrative modality in the prior periid. Accordng to him, the novel of the prior period signified stories and used many hackneyed expressions, exaggerations and antitheses in order to rhythm. He stated that the reality of the novel was ruined as a result of the recitative inclination. On the contray, modern prose is based on a spirit of positivism; therefore, the character of prose art was considerably transformed into a 'descriptive prose style in order to convey the perceived contents as reality. Such a typical expression of modem prose literature is the 'short novel'. Lee Tae-jun's comprehension of the essay is not as clear as of the novel. He evaluated the essay as equal to various forms of prose which had primarily practical character and literary possibility, but was not as true literature. On the other hand, he defined the essay as literature with artistic character and a typical form unlike other prose modalities. In addition, he considered that, in tenns of literature, the distinctive character of the essay is in the narrative of feeling or opinion of the object lightly, piece by piece, without formality. He considered that the essay emotionalised the object unlike the novel which focuses on conveying the object realistically, and the character of the essay form was in a 'characteristic style' unlike the novel form in 'description'. While, in his theory of literature, 'description' is not simply one of the expressive tecniques, but a function of one of the important creative methods contected to modem positivism, ‘style’ tends to be expressive character. Therefore, his theory of the essay has a limit without moving forward to true 'modernism' of the essay and, instead, it tends to fall dangerously close to merely an elegant prose style.