藫庭 金鑢의 한시에 나타난 통속성 연구

Abstract

This study analyzed the poetic literature of Damjeong Kim Ryeo, the literary man representing Korean literature in the 18th century, from the perspective of vulgarity and, by doing so, broadened the understanding of the world of his literature and contributed to the understanding of the trends and characteristics of 18th‐century literature. Damjeong lived through the late Joseon Dynasty undergoing radical social transitions, and the circle of literature also went through many changes. With the emergence of new writers from the middle class, various types of literature were created including novels and sopums. Sopums, which appeared newly in this period, were vulgar writings that reflected ordinary people’s lives and sentiments and written in their colloquial style. Damjeong had to endure 10 years’ painful exile because of his writing of sopums in an avant‐garde style. During his exile, it was common people rather than aristocrat literati who provided generous emotional and material supports. After released from the exile, furthermore, he returned to Yeoreung in Gyeonggi‐do where he had farmland and supported his poor family as the head by doing farming. Such experiences of exile and farming provided a base for his understanding of and communication with ‘the world of common people’ and enriched him with resources for literature that he pursued. In order to communicate with common people, Damjeong wrote using their language profanities and dialects. That is, he did not hesitate to use common people’s daily profanities such as ‘a fellow to be boiled to death’ in his poems. He also revealed common people’s sentiment by composing poems using not only vernacular words such as ‘Yeonropae’ but also words coined with the sound of Chinese words such as ‘Jige’ and ‘Ggongchi.’ Going further, his poetry described contemporary people’s lives realistically based on his own personal experiences of their lives while aristocrat literati made ideational explanations from an observer’s point of view. Vulgarity was one of major characteristics of literature in the late Joseon Dynasty when it began to appear throughout every genre of literature including Korean and Sino‐Korean novels, Sino‐Korean essays, pansori, gasa, sijo, and Sino‐Korean poems. Damjeong was one of those who led such a trend in the history of literature. His life associating with common people demonstrated the idea that all humans were equal and he pursued the consciousness of equality through his literature.