동해안 어촌 당신화의 여성신격 분석 - 강릉문화권을 중심으로 -

Abstract

In this work, shrine myths handed down to fishing villages in the Gangnung cultural area, central region of the east coast of Gangwon, were studied. The shrine myths involved forms with female godhead and had its own narrating structure. This is because a sea-good is often a goddess in many mythical literatures. Thus, this work mainly studied the combination structure of its actant. The collected shrine myths from fishing villages in Gangnung cultural area were 69 cases in total, and 51 involved a female godhead. There were mainly five actants. They are composed of the returning of revengeful spirit, the appearing of an ancestor in a dream, the coming of floating, the punishing of god, and the happening of the miraculous. Our analysis showed that the miraculous actant appeared most frequently, 24 cases in total followed by the punishment of god which was 18. The revengeful spirit was 16 followed by appearing in a dream and floating which both appeared 10 times. The actants in the shrine myths of female godhead can be classified into corporation and non-corporation depending on the relationship between them. When a relationship exists it is named combination, while a single individual is known to have no relationships. When actants have 1:1 relationship to each other, they were called a single combination. However when actants have complex relationship with more than three individuals we call it a multiple combination. The results are as follows. Based upon the shrine myths of the Gangnung cultural area, 13 single combination structures(1:1 combination between actants) were reported. On the other hand, 17 individual cases were recorded, and the actants that is connected with entrance of ancestor were not in them. The reason is because Korean society has a concept that man founded a nation and developed a village in Korea. In the other word, patriarchy culture has existed in the Korean society for a long time. Therefore, we think that patriarchy is contained in the shrine myths of female godhead. The multiple combinations, structural relationships combined with actants more than three, seemed to have some rules. Among the collected 69 cases of female godhead in shrine myths there were 51 cases which were not a perfect combination structure. In earlier studies, they had not only a triangle combination structures, but also other chain’s or diamond’s. However, in this study, the other results were deduced. The reason is because the study is limited to the female godheap in Gangnung, not including the entire east coastal fishing village. Moreover, the analysis is limited to female godheads only. As a result, this study shows that shrine myth actants are dependant upon cultural areas and the type of gods. The female godhead in the fishing village of Gangnung cultural area brought about fish and maritime safety. At the present day, although advanced science dominates the world, humans cannot prevent natural disasters such the typhoon and tsunami. A fisherman said that we earn our life in the other world and spend here. Sometimes the future is out of our hands and it is best to keep peace by having a shrine myth on a female goddess