許蘭雪軒과 徐令壽閤의 漢詩에 나타난 女性像

Abstract

Heo Nanseolheon and Seo Yeongsuhap are two of the utmost female literary figures that left such traces in the history of Chinese literature during Joseon. This study set out to examine and analyze their poems and their poetic consciousness in them according to their perceptions of reality and pursuits in reality. Nanseolheon led such a short life of 27 years from 1563 to 1589, while Yeongsuhap enjoyed her natural span of life of 75 years from 1753 to 1828. Both of them were born in a prestigious family during Joseon when the decorum pressures were heavy on women. Even though the times did not allow women to read books, they learned and studied before getting married into another prestigious family and leading a noble life as the wife of an illustrious official. They also left anthologies behind thanks to the kind considerations of their families. Nanseolheon left 210 poems in Nanseolheonjip published by her young brother Heo Gyun after her death, while Yeongsuhap left 192 poems in Yeongsuhapgo, a supplement to her husband Hong In-mo's collection, Joksudangjip. Even though they shared very similar social and family backgrounds, their poetic worlds were widely different. Their different poetic worlds were examined according to their perceptions of reality and pursuits in reality. In the first area of life as a woman, Nanseolheon had pain from her real life, in which a romantic love she used to dream before marriage did not come true. Her solitude never to be overcome in real life turned into her heartburning yearning for love never to come. Yeongsuhap did not depict a feeling of yearning in her poems. She showed no solitude or sorrow in her works, accepting a given daily life in a serene manner. In the second area of life as a mother, Nanseolheon lost her two very young children to death. Their death was one of the factors that made her poetry rich in a heartburning sentiment. In many of her poems, Yeongsuhap expressed her pride for her children, worries as their mother, and lectures for them to become great figures as a mother loyal to the Confucian and ethical norms of the times. In the third area of deviations from the daily life, both of them regarded themselves as virtuous people that used to live in the good world. In the fourth area of pursuit of extreme good, Nanseolheon pointed out the incompetence of the ruling class, the common people victimized by the ruling class, and the injustice of class discrimination, whereas Yeongsuhap showed no social criticism. She understood that an ideal world was found in “her home”, where she raised her children, assisted her husband, and shared friendship with her neighbors although he had an aspiration for the good world and missed the country. Nanseolheon and Yeongsuhap lived in similar family environments during similar times but expressed such different poetic consciousness. There is no judging which of them is right or better because their different worlds reflected the lives they lived to their best and contained such significant accomplishments in the history of Chinese poetry by female poets.