루쉰의 탈경계적 상상력과 치유의 글쓰기― 「광인일기」를 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the intention behind Lu Xun’s writing through thorough examination of “A Madman’s Diary”, in particular its preface. While the preface does not make up a large volume, it provides important keys to interpret the main text as it introduces the subject of the book in the form of an aside. The novel which consists of a diary and the preface that introduces the diary establishes the boundaries between Classical and Modern Chinese, preface and body, fact and fiction and diary and novel through crossing of different perspectives. It also removes the boundaries by virtue of ‘writing’ as a process of healing. In this process, the place of ‘fact’ given to the diary is shifted to the position of ‘fiction’ in the novel which forms the ‘trick of writing’ and exposes the disguised violence. Practice of cannibalism seen through the perspective of the madman permeates the human consciousness and acts as a powerful ‘paralysis’. As a result, the possibility to bring changes to the unreasonable situations opens up as the madman who existed outside the boundaries of discourse which defined the society ‘returns’ to ‘inside’ the discourse. This is Lu Xun’s method of confronting the world with creative imagination and also a way of criticizing the existing hegemony. As a discursive resistance to the ‘despicable gaze’ that the novel has been receiving, Lu Xun moved the diary into the novel. This in turn destroyed the stereotypical role given to the diary or the novel and enabled the understanding of ‘power’ in the ‘novel’.