耽羅神話에 보이는 女性性의 역사문화적 의미

Abstract

A move to newly perceive and reevaluate Jeju Island’s myths as Jeju Island’s cultural asset is based on previous scholars’ studies of various Tamra mythologies. Tamra mythologies show such wise and strong feminine images as can be shocking to those who see male dominance over women as natural law. Recent studies focusing on these images deserve to be considered as intrinsic explorations into the components of Jeju Island’s society. Jeju island’s unique religious culture is based on bad life situations of the Jeju Island women. In the remote and isolated island with geographic limitations, harsh natural environment and turbulent history, the women of Jeju Island had to go through hardships to play social roles as well as to work around the house, in fields and at sea. Their strong desire for survival and abundance in the changes in nature that poses a threat to life was expressed in faith and awe of supernatural beings. Different types of myth and space were created accordingly, and major leaders in the space of faith were women that led the Jeju Island’s harsh society. Many tribes’ state-founding myths clearly show proofs that there was a long-term female-dominating culture pattern in the early stage of human society. As the expectation of gender role and capacity has changed greatly these days, people are currently paying keen attention to the facts that female-dominating culture pattern was natural in the early stage of human history and that such a stage lasted for a very long time. The comprehensive expression of human life is history, which contains myths as a form of faith and ceremony including manners and customs. Myths with rich contents inherited to the Jeju Island people have their sufficient historical backgrounds. The formation of a myth is difficult to coexist with modern factors of rationalism such as the rule of reason, the development of scientific technology or the phenomenon of industrialization. Nevertheless, these anti-mythical factors had relatively little influence on the history of the Jeju Island people. Feminine emotional factors revealed well in the process of formation and inheritance of Tamra mythologies are found a lot; this is attributed to the fact that the history of the Jeju Island was kept for a long time in the pre-modern stage. Enlightenment rationalism in modern Europe helped to discover abstract natural law and to develop machine civilization and industrial society using natural science and technologies. This history was the outcome of masculine reasoning ability. Meanwhile, Tamra mythologies clearly reveal feminine sensitivity and protective instinct such as the maintenance of simple humanity that is not destroyed by rationalism and industrial civilization. It is noteworthy that Tamra mythologies have been granted subjective roles in being responsible for abundance in the process of the Jeju Island people’s historico-cultural development. Many state-founding myths in the Korean Peninsula include heroic myths filled with wars and strifes. Although feminine images in these myths are limited to the roles of objects or intermediaries, feminine images seen in Tamra mythologies are characterized as heroines having been granted the roles of entities to create heaven and earth and to bring about abundance. In terms of the discovery of a new value to lead the future Jeju Island’s society, it is necessary to newly perceive and reevaluate the value of Tamra mythologies that have been neglected up to now. So, a historico-cultural understanding of femininity seen in Tamra mythologies as the foundation for the inheritance of the Jeju Island’s culture will be a trigger to expand the realm of the Jeju Island’s culture and also to improve the sense of direction for reestablishing the cultural-historical status of Tamra mythologies.