근대의 관점과 사진 매체 -방정환의 소년사진소설 「금시계」와 루쉰 역 「금시계」 함께 읽기-

Abstract

This article explores the modernity, realism, and popularity of photographic media in Bang Jung-hwan’s photo novels for children 「Youngho’s Circumstances(영호의 사정)」 and 「Gold Watch(금시계)」. First, I looked at the commonalities of the lives of Bang Jung-hwan and Lu Xun until they devoted themselves to literature, and in particular, explored their relevance to photography, a modern medium. Contemplating their future path amid the absurdity of imperialism and feudalism, they looked back at their homeland and themselves through the modern perspective symbolized by the projector. Since then, they have placed their hopes on children and young people who are not affected by the old customs. They wanted to change society through literature. Next, I compared two photo novels by Bang Jung-hwan and Lu Xun’s translated children’s literature Clock. Lu Xun’s Clock and Bang Jung-hwan’s Gold Watch share ‘Gold Watch’ and ‘Train’ as symbols of modern times, and also share the story of a watch thief. The protagonists of the two works are the same in that they are urban poor boys. These two works led realist children’s literature. Among them, Bang Jung-hwan’s photo novel shows the reality of children suffering from structural problems. For that purpose, he utilized the reproducibility of photography. With Japanese colonial rule and modern culture in the background, he repeatedly lit up the problem of children not being respected by adults and the urban poor who were not being looked after by society. Finally, I explored the popularity of Bang Jung-hwan’s photo novels. In particular, the role of photographic media was examined in connection with the characteristics of young readers, the era of very illiteracy, and realistic texts. I analyzed the various methods of using photos that Bang Jung-hwan used for the fun of the narrative. I also paid attention to the fact that he tried to deepen the technique of using photos in line with the development of narrative writing. In this paper, I concluded that Bang Jung-hwan created and repeatedly developed the genre of photo novels in order to promptly convey to children readers a sense of problem and hope for society that he had while looking back at his country from a modern perspective. In the process, I looked at the contribution of the photographic media to the realism and popularity of realist narratives, and tried to get implications for the creation of multimedia narratives for children these days.