이상과 목시영의 근대인식 비교연구

Abstract

Lee Sang and Mu Shiying were very active writers who worked on writing in Korea and China in 1930's. Seoul and Shanghai in 1930's where Lee Sang and Mu Shiying worked were epitomes of modern times created by imperialistic capitalism. Their criticism on colonialism in their works is often replaced with criticism on capitalism. This article aims to comparatively study their modern recognition and their perspective on ‘modern times’ by analyzing their major works. For Lee Sang and Mu Shiying, modern cities are the objects of curiosities and those of anxiety and fear at the same time. Lee Sang distances himself from those modern cities and grasps the logic of capitalism from the perspective of an observer. For Mu Shiying, Shanghai where the tradition and the modern times are mingled is a deformed city. Lee Sang and Mu Shiying express their senses of anxiety about the modern consumption pattern. The main character of Lee Sang's novel shows his aversion to modern times by expressing his fear for fetism of capitalism that continuously arouses our desires for material things in the monetary order. On the contrary, Mu Shiying obsesses about modern ‘time’ through modern consumption and acutely feels the fatigue and sense of impotence coming after such experience. At the same time, those two writers focus on the human relations of modern times through metafictional writing. While Lee Sang expressed the collapse of faith in humans relations, Mu Shiying expressed severance of communication in the human relations of modern times. Basically, while Lee Sang's perspective is ‘looking down’ from above and ‘looking in’ from outside by grasping the fictitious lives of colonialistic modern times, that of Mu Shiying is ‘exposing’ from inside to outside through a variety of direct experiences in the modern cities.