‘에밀레종’ 전설의 일본어 번역과 식민지시기 희곡의 정치성 －함세덕의 희곡 「어밀레종」을 중심으로－

Abstract

The goal of this study is to analyze the records of the legend of the Emile Bell, elucidating the influence of the colonial Japanese translations on the Korean records of the legend. The very first records of the legend are the English translations by missionaries. However, these poems or short introductory texts do not specify the temporal or spatial background of the story and focus only on the motif of sacrificing a child in the process of forging a bell. They lack explicit description of the characters and narrative structure, also not showing any relation to the Bell of Bongdeoksa. Only after the 1920’s, when the legend was documented by the Japanese, the records began to convey clear portrayal of the characters, structured narratives and the link to the Bell of Bongdeoksa. Hamaguchi’s “Play Daughter Sacrifice Story” was the first to establish the motifs of “the Emile Bell” legend by explicitly depicting the characters and showing a concrete narrative. Nakamura’s “The Bell of Bongdeoksa” represented the story in connection with the Bell of Bongdeoksa for the first time. Osaka’s record first mentions a woman who voluntarily gives her child as a temple offering. Those records by the Japanese influenced the records by Korean researchers after the 1930’s. The texts feature a range of representations of women, classified into slip-resistance, slip-conformity and voluntary-offering types. The representations of slip-resistance type later developed into the image of women criticizing the Japanese Empire for mobilizing the people of Korea by force. Voluntary-offering type, in combination with slip-conformity motif in artist novels, developed into the image of women used for the propagation of the war ideology. In the light of the images of women discussed above, “the Emile bell” by Ham-sedeok can be seen as a criticism of the “mother of military nation” ideology. Despite the apparent pro-Japanese framework, his work shows how Ihwanyeo resists to the unjust authority that demands sacrifice of a child and thus points out the violent nature of the ideology forcing mothers to send their children to the battlefield.