한국 근대 아동극에 나타난 동물 연구 -『어린이』, 『신소년』, 『별나라』를 중심으로-

Abstract

In order to understand the characteristics and meaning of children’s plays featuring animals in modern children’s plays, children’s plays were divided into ‘fable plays’ with strong allegories and ‘allegorical fairy tale plays’ with strong fairy tale elements.In fables plays that aim to convey a moral lesson, animals are performers who represent human characters. The fable plays mainly emphasizes the ‘warning against greed’ and contains content such as two fighting over food only to have it stolen by a third party, and the main character in danger due to excessive greed. The allegorical fairy tale plays can be divided into works in which small and weak animals are set as representatives of children and works in which animals symbolize the strong and weak in class. The former actively utilized animal dances and songs while using animal play as the subject, and the latter reproduced the hierarchical structure of human society through the animal’s weak and strong world. In modern children’s plays, anthropomorphic animals played an important role. First, the allegorical system of children’s plays was naturally established as the same animals were repeated with similar meanings. Second, the performance of children’s plays has been strengthened by focusing on the theatrical representation of animals. Third, animal personification contributed to securing the independence of children’s plays, which are distinct from adult plays.