이병주 대중소설의 갈등구조 연구

Abstract

Narim, Lee, Byung-Ju (1921〜Apr, 1992) is a productive writer who has published more than 60 medium to long stories. He has been steadily writing his novels with his literary goal to incorporate the truth of society and history. Compared to his steady and productive writing activities, however, it is well-known that Korean literary circle has paid less attention to the studies of his literature. Although there may be many reasons for this, the major reason would be the fact that he has not passed through a formal debut process and maintained his own unique literary route. However, his writings incorporate 100 years of Korea history and his viewpoint of history and times, accordingly. In addition, his awareness as a writer to search for the truthfulness of human being among the many and various phenomena in the human world coexists with them in his writings. Taking into this account, it is required to properly re-evaluate the writings of Lee, Byung-Ju. Re-evaluation movement of his writings has appeared at a very slow tempo after he died, and the re-evaluation movement is oriented toward to only a few of his writings to pursue historical truth. In other words, although popular novels take majority of the writing of Lee, Byung-Ju, there are no studies on these novels. However, his popular novels include, small or big,the scenery of the society in those days and writer’s awareness to search for the truthfulness of human society. This point per se is thought to be worthy enough to study popular novels of Lee, Byung-Ju as the societal drawings in those days. This writing analyzed the conflict plots in the selected target texts from his writings including 『The River of Betrayal』, 『Golden-White Gate』, and 『Rainbow Study』 which focused on the physiology and pathological phenomenon of capitalism among other societal issues in those days. First, chapter 2 examined the conflict patterns in regular novels and mentioned on the contradictory conflict plot among them. Chapter 3 examined the cause of the conflict? aggravation? resolution processes with the three stories of Lee, Byung-Ju. The conflicts in the three stories were all caused by the materialism promoted by capitalism, and they wereaggravated as the social morality and ethics collapsed. Finally, the conflicts were resolved through the chastisement of the vice. Throughout this process, this writing reexamined the social meaning of Lee, Byung-Ju’s popular novels which attract readers’interest and at the same time stimulate the awareness of societal reality and the need for improvement without remaining as a simple didactic novel.