위화 소설 연구의 몇 가지 문제

Abstract

This study embarks on an attempt to reevaluate the existing scholarship on the writer Yuhua by revisiting some of the main analytical questions that help us understand his fictional works. The first question I pose is how to explain the transformation in Yuhua's creative works. How are we to understand the viewpoint of the narrator in his works, for example? Why is Yuhua so obsessive with violence and death? Lastly, how do we analyze the ideal character, SongPanping who appears in ‘Brothers’? By asking these questions, I engage with a larger topic, creative writing, not only of Yuhua but also of his contemporaries, in a scholarly approach that aims at further understanding. Literary texts cannot be fully explained in terms of understanding their socio-political background. In Yuhua's case, however, his works require one such close examination of the socio-political climate of their production because of the indelible traces of the Chinese Cultural Revolution that set the tone in his fictional world. One of the dominant themes in Yuhua's works is the notion of ‘self’ whose maturation has been thwarted by the traumatic experiences engendered by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This notion of stalling, premature ‘self’ offers a key to deciphering some of the puzzling behaviors of Yuhua's characters. If one can grasp the psychology of the premature ‘self’ in Yuhua's fictional world and understand his fear and anxiety one could then also arrive at an understanding of the world reflected within. That is to say, understanding Yuhua's fictional works ultimately has to come from understanding the world mediated through the premature ‘self’.