개화기 문체의 시작과 변화: 서유견문과 신찬초등소학을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper studies the 19th century writing in Korea, how it began and transformed. At the end of 19th century, Korean society experienced diverse changes in its traditions. Traditional ideals, life style and the world view were shaken by new ideals and perspectives during the enlightenment period which today is called the ‘Gaehwagi’. The writing also was effected by these subsequent changes. Before Gaehwagi, Korean sentences were written in Chinse characters. Educated people used only Chinese characters to express their thoughts and opinions. However, following the Gaehwagi, Hangul (Korean alphabet) and Chinese characters were used together. But soon after the problem became apparent with the general public in that they were not educated well enough to employ both the Chinese characters and Hangul in the same sentences, it was a new writing style they had never experienced. The paper addresses the question of how the new writing style became a ‘norm’ following the Gaehwagi by comparing the Seo-Yu-Kyun-Mun (1895) and the Shin-Chan-Cho-Deung-So-Hak (1909). Historically Seo-Yu-Kyun-Mun used Hangul almost for the first time in what may be defined as a formal writing, while Shin-Chan-Cho-Deung-So-Hak was used as a manual to teach the general public. In Seo-Yu-Kyun-Mun one finds that the use of Chinese characters and Hangul was successfully negotiated as one dialect, and even though the use of Hangul was somewhat restrictive, we can evaluate it as being the stepping stone for the new writing style. Shin-Chan-Cho-Deung-So-Hak showed progress from Seo-Yu-Kyun-Mun in terms of the usage of Hangul. In Shin-Chan-Cho-Deung-So-Hak, Hangul was used to express the substantial morpheme in addition to the grammatical morpheme. And since it used only Hangul in some sentences and paragraphs, one can assume that the usage of Hangul had been generalized to some degree at that time. Though traditional long-descriptive minuscule writing style was also going through changes, the use of paragraph became more apparent in the Shin-Chan-Cho-Deung-So-Hak, compared to the Seo-Yu-Kyun-Mun.