종북소선(鐘北小選)의 평어(評語) 연구

Abstract

Jongbuksoseon (鐘北小選) is a book by Lee Deok-moo where he made pyeongjeom (評點, critical comments combined with circles or points marked beside the writing) on 10 writings by Park Ji-won. This book has remained little known in academia; this paper is the first to study in earnest how this pyeongjeom-based criticism was pursued. Given the close and special interrelation between the author and the critic, pyeongjeom-based criticism in Jongbuksoseon stands out clearly in the literary history of not only Korea but also East Asia as a whole. What is particularly noteworthy is that this book of criticism embodies a spiritual resonance and aesthetical rapport between the two intellectuals of extraordinary creativity, Park Ji-won and Lee Deok-moo. Thus, this paper aims at highlighting Lee Deok-moo as an outstanding critic of prose, an aspect that has not been discovered so far, and at the same time, at explaining what was behind the ground-breaking accomplishment that he made with Jongbuksoseon. Jongbuksoseon taps into three formats of criticism:bangbi (旁批, critical comments put beside the writing), malbi (末批, critical comments put at the end of the writing), and mibi (眉批, critical comments put upside the writing), with the latter of which deserving the greatest attention. In the book, each of the mibi comments serves as a single, independent artistic prose in a way that is unprecedented throughout the history of pyeongjeom-based criticism in East Asia. In this regard, it would be fair to say that Lee Deok-moo accomplished a splendid “invention” in the critical history of East Asia.