최남선과 국민문학론의 위상

Abstract

The core of Choi Nam-Sun's discourse of national literature boils down to his two main assertions. The first one is that Sijo(a Korean traditional verse) has to be viewed as a major genre of national literature representing the nationality and locality of Chosun. The second is that Chosun's national literature can equal other world literature. His these two points resulted from his thoughts that sijo had the same meaning as literature and poetry in the west and it could match Chinese Shi-jing and Man-y-sh. In addition to this, his opinion was also the output which he framed through the process of studying the development of Japanese poetry discourse in Maiji period. Choi Nam-Sun tried to express the history and national consciousness based on Dangun in his Baekpal Bunnoi(the hundred and eight torments of mankinds). In this poem, he thought that Sijo could be an important media reviving a national identity not as a recollection, but as a present being. It is why he chose Sijo as his genre that he felt that through Sijo he could contribute to the national consciousness centered on Dangun and found his lifelong task. However, it is thought that his efforts are rather in contrast to the trend of vers libre which contemporary poets were fond of, and far from modern poetry's goal. On top of this, his position stands in a contradictory place because Chosun had yet to be a nation state so that a national literature couldn't exist in fact. This is a contradiction of the discourse of national literature and explains a colonial thinker's position.