‘소설가’ 방정환과 근대 단편소설의 두 계보

Abstract

This article focuses on Bang Jeong-hwan as a ‘novelist’ that has beenshaded behind his fame as a writer of juvenile stories or activist forjuveniles. Bang Jeong-hwan was active as a ‘literary youth’ from thelate 1910’s till the early 1920’s, the period of formation of Koreanmodern short stories, and received attention as a rising novelist of thetime. The researches on Bang Jeong-hwan’s novels should begenuinely investigated not only because they have significance in thehistory of novels during the formation of modern short novels but alsobecause they allow us to examine his literature and thoughtmultilaterally. Bang Jeong-hwan’s novels are classified into two genealogies:‘novels of work-study students’ and ‘romantic novels’. In his ‘novels ofwork-study students’, he described the dream and despair of workstudystudents pursuing a ‘position’ in the colonial modern erarealistically. According to the difference of the media selector or chiefreaders, the novels of this genealogy are divided into the ones thathighlight the aspects of youths dreaming of and striving for a ‘position’or ‘success’ despite the poverty and hardship and the others that stress the desperate situation in which work-study students’ dream getsdefeated by unjust reality brutally. Meanwhile, his ‘romantic novels’show the new youths or new women of that time were in the path todeclare parting from the feudalistic order of the olden days through freelove. However, it could not reach love as the realization of personalityor freedom but still held the limitation of adopting the structure of theenlightenment such as trust or the national cause. Bang Jeong-hwancreated ‘novels of work-study students’ during the 1910’s, the end ofthe Enlightenment and approached ‘romantic novels’ in the early1920’s when romanticism appeared, and again, in the place that wasblocked, he showed his transfer to satiric causeries revealing corruptionof the time. From the series of processes that he created novels, we cansee that the three tendencies of Enlightenment, Romanticism, andRealism penetrating his literature are complexly associated and playedas variations.