방정환의 동화와 소년소설에서의 성장과 근대성의 문제

Abstract

This paper analyzes the meaning of growth and modernity in Bang Jeonghwan’s fairy tales and juvenile novels. For comparative literary analysis, this paper referred to Franco Moretti’s study of Bildungsroman and Christopher Parkes’ study of British children’s literature. For Bang Jeonghwan, “children” and “juvenile” were emergent beings sharing the same goal: The modern project. However, to Bang Jeonghwan, children were treated as “anti-modern impulses” (romance), whereas juveniles were treated as “modern representations”(reality). The two seem to be the opposite. This paper attempts to approach the meaning of growth and modernity by understanding the gap between Bang Jeonghwan’s ‘children’ and ‘juvenile.’ In appearance, ‘children’ and ‘juvenile’ seem to be contradictory. This was similarly found in British romantic literature, with children as the protagonists. Parkes read the character of children at the time as “the living embodiment of the spirit of capitalism.” This paper transforms and applies it as ‘the living embodiment of the spirit of modernism.’ Bang Jeonghwan’s ‘children’ and ‘juvenile’ are connected like both sides of a coin. The figures of children in his fairy tales seem far from modernism, but the distance between children and modernism does not suggest that their relationship is the opposite. Because the distance between them is temporary. Children are temporarily separated from reality in order to grow into beings more consistent with the “modern representation.” As a result of analyzing the text, the children’s enjoyment in Bang Jeonghwan’s fairy tales occurred as long as they have embodied the sense of modernity. Therefore, children here can be considered the backside of ‘the spirit of modernism’ and kind of preliminary stage rather than ‘anti-modern impulses.’ Children who have internalized modernity must grow into juveniles and take on the task of the modern project in earnest and intervene in reality. However, due to the colonial condition, those who grew up from children to juveniles could not get the same narrative. As a result, in Bang Jeonghwan’s juvenile novel, the juvenile appears as an already mature being, rather than reaching maturity through a series of processes. His juvenile novels repeat the narrative in which the already mature juvenile's nature is discovered and recognized by the adult character around him. It did not correspond to the model of Western Bildungsroman, which promoted harmony between the “inner law”(self) and the “external law”(socialization). This paper regards it as a result of the difference in the conditions of the colonization and analyzes the relationship between the reality of the time and the characteristics revealed in Bang Jeonghwan’s juvenile novels.