현대시 교육을 위한 리듬의 재이해

Abstract

Rhythm is one of the essential elements in poetry. Generally, rhythm arouses a particular sentiment or atmosphere in readers through its signifiants equipped with physical sound image. Also, rhythm gets to be formed by not only its signifiant but signifié, too. Of course, in poetic words, both their significant and signifié exist in a way of connecting different areas. However, in modern poetry education based on ‘here, now’, understanding rhythm seems to be limited to the signifiant. Therefore, this study has examined the subject matters related to rhythm in current high school literature textbooks to analyze the practice and figure out the new direction. Rhythm is not just a horizontal concept simply having its temporal length but a vertical concept, too, having a spatial height combined to readers’ sentiment. It means that rhythm is not two-dimensional but three- dimensional concept. If rhythm is understood as some concept of tempo, each line having an identical amount of time physically will end up being regarded as the same rhythm. However, even with a subtle change resulted from any addition or omission of a postposition or ending, we clearly get to experience some emotional movement. Also, syntactically, too, by changing the arrangement of phrases, different meaning can be formed. Of course, in poetic literature, not just external but inner rhythm exist, too. But the focus of this study is not on whether rhythm is revealed either consciously or unconsciously. Also, it does not deny the fact that rhythm is associated with meaning. Yet, in that rhythm is related with the signifié, and here, meaning is constructed not only by the significant but by readers, too, this researcher intends to find the agent that forms rhythm should be the readers. Also, this study is going to see the concept of rhythm gets to be formed according to the poetic meaning by regarding it as some three- dimensional object built by time and space. In other words, poetic meaning is prior to rhythm. Therefore, sometimes, some irregular rhythm can be formed by the cracks of poetic meaning. In fact, rhythm makes the mind of readers some kind of place. Such work of reconceptualizing rhythm is expected to be significant when explaining different phenomena in modern poetry in which many signifiants exist disturbingly and a poem gets longer.