1950년대 문단과 ‘정연희’라는 위치-전후 지식인 담론과 실존주의 수용의 맥락에서

Abstract

Jeong, Yeonhee started her literary career in 1957 and created a number of works in the 1950s. When the gender dichotomy and the gender role of the literary world were clear, she was alienated from literature and research history because she did not sit in a designated seat. This paper attempted to properly explain the principles that penetrated Jeong, Yeonhee's early works by dealing with her works in the 1950s, who had been forgotten before being illuminated from the 1960s in the Women's Literary world. Jeong, Yeonhee actively embraced the post-war intellectual discourse through existentialism and sought a new modern literature. As Korean existentialism showed a refraction from negative thought to 'humanism', humanism to 'participation', Jeong’s literature showed the foundation of a free human being out of a priori view of humanity, the despair and anxiety encountered by a freed human. Furthermore, it showed a possibility of participatory literature through the process of establishing a constructive “youth-woman” that resists the unreasonable established order. In this way, female writer Jeong, Yeonhee accepts post-war existentialist ideas, actively responds to intellectual discourse, and builds a world of work that is different from both male and female authors. Therefore, remembering Jeong's 1950s works will be a re-evaluation of post-war existentialist literature, which was remembered negatively and nihilistically, and complementing the limitations of post-war intellectuals literature, whose literary value was questioned by excessive enlightenment.