다시 말해지는 이야기들의 포스트모던적 경향연구: 『숲속의 잠자는 공주』와 『지킬박사와 하이드』 다시 쓰기

Abstract

Stories are retold because they are continuously cherished and needed in the society. Retold stories are often myths, folklores, biblical stories and fairy tales which usually contain important cultural functions. Like remodelling or reforming, retold stories are partially changed according to the requirements or spirits of the times. Whereas the modern era showed many retold stories of mythology under the influence of grand narratives, determinacy and centeredness, the postmodern era, due to its tendency of local narratives, indeterminacy and fragmentalism, displays more retelling trends of fairy tales and canonized works. Especially, the advanced science against diversified religions caused a widespread father-absence syndrome in the postmodern culture in which abject and gothic female images and monstrous in-between hybrid artifacts filled the voids of the chaotic age. Robert Coover’s and Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose which are respectively the retelling of the Sleeping Beauty is a good example where the abjection of female heroines attests to the disruption of gender and the trauma of politics in the contemporary society. The prevalent hybrid images in Valerie Martin’s rewriting of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde demonstrate the uncanny nature of the postmodern era because of their powerful boundary-crossing heterogeneities. Finally, this paper concludes the replenishments of the contemporary literature will be greatly influenced and boosted by this widespread retelling of the old important stories, promising the symbiosis of the old and the new as the essential nature of narratives which are the very expressions of our meaningful lives.