황순원 단편소설에 나타나는 공간 연구

Abstract

This study sets out to analyze the meanings of spaces and discuss their changing patterns in Hwang Soon-won’s short stories. Previous studies on his literature has focused on “lyricism,” one of the important characteristics of his works, but these discussions has been criticized for “transcendentalism” and “logic of a vacuum tube.” The present study thus decided to analyze the spaces in his early short stories, which has been discussed relatively less and examine their changing patterns, shedding new light on his awareness of reality inside his works. As Henri Lefebvre argues “Every society—and, therefore, every mode of production—produces a certain space, its own space,” spaces form direct and indirect relations with internal and external elements of novels and reproduce meanings actively. That is, spaces reproduced in a writer’s works do more than remaining as simple narrative backgrounds and offer critical clues to look into his awareness of reality. In his short stories, there are three major patterns of reproducing a space: first, mythical spaces defined as absolute space; second, premodern spaces with pastoral values; and finally, settlement spaces where the subjects can stay. The present study analyzed these three types of spaces and demonstrated that his works did not settle down in the domain of “lyricism” and had his clear awareness of changes of the times and worries over the reality connoted in them.