김유정의 「봄·봄」에 나타난 웃음문화와 외국인을 위한 문학교육

Abstract

This paper seeks to design an activity-centered classroom syllabus in a Korean teaching-learning setting, mainly with the Korean novel Spring, spring written by You Jeong Kim. This novel Spring, spring provides us with an humorous description of gloomy reality under the oppressions in colonized Korea in the 1930s, maintaining the universality of all time that can be recreated into various genres of art. Also, with affluent culture of laughter in Korean literature in it, the novel induces the learners’ interests and enables them to achieve internalization and individualization through extensive reading and appreciation. In the pre-reading section, in order to augment the learners’ internal motivation, the teacher focuses on identifying the elements of laughter which are based on the learners’ reaction to such texts as folk tales of a tiger, folk paintings like A magpie and a tiger, and the pansori Heung-bu-ga, and on forming some schema regarding the culture of laughter. The reading section consists of several activities. First, students discuss the meanings and ways of triggering laughter after they read The tale of a foolish son-in-law among the Korean traditional folk tales about fools. The tale of a foolish son-in-law reveals the confrontation and conflicts between the son-in-law and the family in a roundabout way by masking them with laughter. Therefore, it is this stage that needs strategies for leaners to find out the punch lines in the story and to think about them empathetically and critically. Next, before reading Spring, Spring, students watch the TV drama Spring, spring. Watching a few selected scenes from the drama and scanning the novel enable students to read the novel actively; they are assigned to induce the archetypical symbol of spring and the circularity of seasons from the features of the characters, theme, narrative structure of the novel and to make a story map about the conflicts between the characters. In the main reading session, students read the novel silently on their own and then fill out the form which is designed to grasp the synopsis and features of its narrative structure. While reading aloud in groups, students can understand the features of the characters as well as their conflict relations, and also discuss the elements of laughter and punch lines. In doing so, students are invited to look for the expressions and non-verbal communicative acts which indicate the characteristics of the figures in the story, and to make a guess of their meanings in the text and literary significance. During a post-reading session for internalization, students role-play a theater of situations. In addition, they can take part in a discussion which will provide them an opportunity to think critically about the culture of laughter with relation to the narrative structure, expressions, and theme of the fiction Spring, spring and relevant to some classical literary texts. Teachers may encourage students to write a literature response journal and letters to the literary figures for the purpose of writing for internalization. In the process of appreciating the culture of laughter in the novel Spring, spring and reactions to it, learners can have a good opportunity to comprehend the presence of Korean people󰡑s emotional tendency to overcome the crisis and distress in reality by nourishing the culture of language.