한・일 문학에 나타난 이상향(理想郷) 의식 연구 - 청학동과 가쿠레자토(隠れ里)를 중심으로 -

Abstract

In this paper, we examined similarities between Cheonghakdong and Kakurezato, which are different lands in mountains expressed in Korean and Japanese literatures, and then compared the consciousness for Utopia projected on it based on the social changes at that time. Cheonghakdong and Kakurezato are shown as an ideal paradise space drawn in the remote and secluded place in the mountains. These two paradises consist of small members and self-sufficient communities centered on agriculture, except for some parts of utopia of Japan. Those places deny a discrimination based on the hierarchy, eliminate tax deprivation and war suffering, and aim for joint labor and equitable distribution. This kind of paradise of natural state was intentionally recorded in the time of late Joseon and Edo. Although both periods had difference in the type of politics, such as Royal authority system and Shogunate system, they all gradually showed contradictions of a modern social system and a collapse of the self-sufficient economic order by the development of a commodity-based and monetary economy. In the course of these similar social changes, the desire and expectation for a better society that had grown in response to the complaints and frustrations of the people to a longing for paradise. The awakening of the modern consciousness toward a better life with equality, freedom, peace, and abundance, included in the paradise, definitely broadened the horizon of the history of each domestic literature and contributed to social development to a certain degree.