신소설에 나타난 ‘문명’의 표상-개념과 스토리의 연관관계를 중심으로-

Abstract

In this paper, I analyzed how the concept of Mun'myoung(civilization) was represented in diverse works of Sinsoseol(new novels) which were published during the early modern period in Korea. Relating the typical stories of Sinsoseol with the concept's operating process, this paper aimed to examine how the concept of Mun'myong was appropriated into the secular lives of the period and to newly understand the meaning of Sinsoseol related with its social circumstances. The typical story of Sinsoseol can be summarized in the process of woman's ordeals such as expulsion, a sexual crisis, suicide trials, rescues, and returning. Usually, these ordeals were happened on the bases of the absence of the patriarches such as a father, a fiancee or a husband, who were studying abroad. On this basic story structure, the concept of Mun'myoung was developed as an empty signifier which did not have a concrete meaning, even though the signifier functioned as to be an ideological slogan of the story. From the perspectives of the Western point of view in Sinsoseol, Mun'myoung was the centric representation of future-Choseon whereas the concrete meaning of it was almost absent and thus abstract. When the signifier of Mun'myoung became an ideology even though its meaning, the signified, was still remained unattainable, Sinsoseol tried to fill up the empty meaning by recalling the old Confucian value such as chaste life. Thus, in Sinsoseol, the old and the new coexisted without any trouble. This peaceful coexistence revealed the fact that Sinsoseol was the narrative which could not keenly realize the contradiction between the East(old) and the West(new) and thus could not reach to higher recognition to regulate the conflict among them. However, the empty signifier of Mun'myoung opened a space to project secular people' desire which aspired to rethink of righteous relationship of human. In this vein, the contradictory coexistence of the old and the new could be understood, not as a mere degradation into the old fashioned value, but as an active representation of the mass's expectation for better life. On the above process, this paper tired to prove that Mun'myoung was represented not only as a mediator to transplant the disposition of modern Western life into Choseon but also as a mediator to imagine new life which was generated from the native sense and desire for better life and relationship.