장일우 문학비평 연구

Abstract

This study is to examine literary criticism of Jang Il-woo, the Korean critic residing in Japan who released articles on Hanyang(『漢陽』), the culture magazine issued in Tokyo Japan in the 1960's. As the spirit of publication of Hanyang was a participation in reality based on the spirit of the times of April Revolution, critique of Jang Il-woo as well focused on criticism on the political society of South Korea in the 1960's. Jang Il-woo insisted that artists were responsible for combining history and reality, and thus artistic values of works could be represented by establishing the nature of ideas based on social truth. He regarded ‘pureness’ without recognition of the historical reality as mere ‘self- deception’ and ‘a flight from reality.’ Thus, he defended realism in that artists should have the spirit of creativity and attitude to lead readers to the genuine truth and conscience of the age. Especially, he tried to give it a meaning by combining realism with romanticism. In his view, the values of realism should go beyond accurate observation and description of the reality and seek to present the vision of history. The Theory of Engagement Literature in 1960 emphasized the spirit and attitude of realism that criticized the difficulty and conservatism of the poetry of postwar modernism and reflected the reality in life. Jang Il-wo-woo insisted to attach to reality and write poems reflecting reality in life and awareness of history, saying that the poetry literature in time rationalized a flight from reality in the tent of difficulty. In addition, he investigated the matter of tradition by criticizing such tendency of modernism since he considered the poetry of modernism that lost the uniqueness of the nation and tended to ignore the tradition lacking the identity and representing the extreme Western-oriented nature of Korean modern poetry. In short, the ultimate direction of his criticism to modernism aimed to present the future vision of our poetry literature looted from the ethnic tradition.