시로 노래한 학문의 세계 : 老柏軒 鄭載圭論

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the academic spirit of Jeong Jae-gyu(Noh Baek-heon, 1843~1911) in his poetic world. The research efforts shed light onto the literary world of Yeongnam Giho School and its aspects from the latter half of the 19th century to the former half of the 20th century. At the root of Jeong's life and literature was his strong love for study, based on which he engaged in active writing and academic activities. There are many figures appearing in his poetic world, which suggests that his poetic world was formed through academic bonds and that he needed creative activities for his study. There was Yulgok School at the center of his study and Nammyeong School and Toigye School around it, which means that his study was open to Yeongnam School, having its origin in Giho School. The nature in his poetic world was firmly connected to the ideas of Sung Confucianism, which is why the nature, literature and Sung Confucianism were able to build one common body of works in his poetic world. His ideological perceptions and poetic embodiments of objects take a critical position in the method of his poetry writing. However, it is difficult to conclude that his works are inclined toward ideality since he created his works feeling such an urgent sense of crisis in an unprecedented era of jeopardy. Going through a serious cultural crisis caused by the dress code reform and the ordinance prohibiting topknots, he praised the Chinese scholars that sacrificed their lives for integrity in the late Ming Dynasty in his poems and thus demonstrated his further reinforced determination to preserve the right and dispel the wrong. The meaning structure of his poetic world is far from simple. Writing poems based on his loving spirit of study and through his academic connections, he tried to inherit the moral philosophy of ancient sages and discover principles in various matters. Realizing that his efforts could lead to ideology, he saw the contemporary times as the reality of extreme crisis and attempted to pursue social practice. His poems, however, are not combined with the spirit of practice. Rather those works that strongly display the ideas of Sung Confucianism are dominating, which indicates that his poetic world was built around the traditional views of the world. It is the natural result of his attempts to react to the reality while adhering to Neo-Confucianism, which is clearly observable in his poetic world, being a characteristic and limitation at the same time.