최인훈 초기 중단편 소설의 현대성

Abstract

The most important principle of Choi Inhoon's novels is 'self-reflection'. It is already embodied not only in his novels after Kwangjang, but also in earlier works. In Choi Inhoon's earlier novels, self-reflection which is presented in cognitive and aesthetic level respectively is the product of self-affirmation aims at inspecting and turning round his own situation. In the former case, it is presented as a phenomenology of self-consciousness that is tend to measure and furthermore overcome the gab between his own ideal criterion and his present situation. And in the latter case, it is presented as an aesthetic self-consciousness that reflects on the meaning of his writing in his own novels. Such a self-consciousness is very important, because it is connected with literary subjectivity. In other words, Choi Inhoon's self-consciousness in his earlier novels is the product of the desire for ensuring a basis of self-definitive subjectivity which can cope with and overcome Korean modernity. Choi Inhoon's earlier novels already show us a subject who develops a drama of such desire and also a reflective subject who can objectify his own consciousness and activities all together. This is the very spot where Choi Inhoon's earlier novels break with the Post-war novels; contrary to the Post-war novels, they revived an autonomous subject who can keep a cognitive and aesthetic distance from reality without being overwhelmed by destructive affections of the post-war reality. The modernity of Choi Inhoon's earlier novels can be found at this point, because the foundation of aesthetic modernity is the existence of a reflective subject who can set up himself as a subject and a object of reflection at once. And at the same time, it is the point where Choi Inhoon's earlier novels open the way for novels in the 1960s; they anticipate novels in the 1960s in that they show the inner consciousness of individualist subject and the self-consciousness on the literary language and method. Judging from this point of view, Choi Inhoon's earlier novels call upon us to reregulate the existing viewpoint on the literary history of the 1960s. They show that '4.19' is not the one and only determinant of rupturing with the Post-war novels. Therefore In the level of literary subject and method, the rupture with the Post-war novels and being affected by '4.19' are take place at the different times. Without thinking over this point, understanding of literary history which reduce cause of shaping identity of Choi Inhoon's own novels and novels in the 1960s to only an event in history as '4.19', is not free from naive historical determinism. Therefore, in order to explain about Choi Inhoon's novels and novels in the 1960s entirely, it is necessary to give consideration to uncontinuous layers of literary history which are shaped by intersection between differential temporalities each other. Novels which are written before Kwangjang become the important reference data in that point.