현단계 아동문학 장르론에 대한 비판적 고찰-원종찬의 이원수 장르론 해석을 중심으로

Abstract

The genre of children’s literature has once again attracted a lot of interest in recent days. In his theoretical essays on historical genres, which were written around early of 2000s, Won Jong-Chan have focused on the differences between Donghwa―corresponds to modern fairy-tale in Western children’s literature―and ‘novel’ and proposed four basic genres of narratives for children. As they are primarily related with ‘age group’, they may replace literary arguments with non-literary. Also it is partly because of inspecting inheritances with no caution. As one of the first critics and a prolific writer,Lee Won-Soo, the most important precedent researcher whom Won referred to, contemplated what Donghwa should be as well as what it was, observing contemporary narrative forms in korea and classical works of fantasy in other counties as well. Won’s study had some restrictions resulted from ignoring those things. In this essay l would bring up afresh the matter of understanding what Lee Won-Soo thought, to put it again as a starting point. Above all, Lee Won-Soo’s notion of Donghwa and novel wasn’t strictly connected with certain age groups. In fact, most of fantastic short stories,called Donghwa, were written for young children in his days and he dealt with reading materials to help adults who were looking for guidances for their young readers. However real life should be distinguished from theoretical approach. Furthermore, his definition of Donghwa was comprehensive from the beginning, which was applicable to various narrative texts, so he could extend his ideas to fantasy, one of promising genres. He could talk about new narrative devices without inventing new terms. It seems to be a preliminary inspection when we think about fantastic fiction of these days.