신화 다시 쓰기: 李銳의 『人間』, 葉兆言의 『后羿』, 蘇童의 『碧奴』, 阿來의 『格薩爾王』의 ‘반영웅주의’ 비교를 중심으로

Abstract

The objects of analyses in this paper, <The Myth of Lady White Snake> by Li-Rui, <The Myth of HouYi and ChangE> by Ye-Zhaoyan, <The Myth of Meng Jiang Nu> by Su-Tong, and <The Song of King Gesar> by A-Lai are the re-written novels in which the subjects of myths and sagas are re-told in much more abundance, and the metaphors, symbols, mystics, and fantasies naturally accumulated in the mind of the chinese for the long history were met with the authors' distinctive imaginations. These works are in common that they inherited the motive of 'Brother-Sister Got Married in Flood Myth' in terms of acceptance of the handed-down stories, and directed themselves to literary variations through the anti-heroic narrative strategy in terms of 're-writing'. One of the reasons of mystical beings birth is that in an absurd society where power has dominance and violation is rampant, people desire heroes who would make them escape from the pains and threats in reality. The primitive desires brought births of the mythical beings like White Snake, Yi, Meng Jiang Nu, or Gesar. They are the pre-cursors of the main characters of the four works. The four works went along the narrative structure with the flood(water)-survival of the siblings(man and woman with forbidden lusts) - test(crises and trials) - success(marriage and great achievement) - conclusion(catastrophe/harmonization), and the plots and the mythical beings were newly tranformed(re-written). The heroes of the stories re-written by the four authors were all the 'true human-being', who tried to approach to people but were excluded by the people, being ended in poor mythical-legendary beings. They were the lone beings who possessed the destiny and necessity and were supposed to be sacrificed for people. They revealed their characteristic deficits such as simplicity and immatureness such as being fallen to blind lusts. Meanwhile, they were all altruistic philanthropists, optimists without desire for power, and liberalists practicing love. The four authors throw the question of 'who are the real human-beings?', by revealing the 'anti-heroism' of the mythical beings in a paradoxical way. Lady White Snake, HouYi, BiNu, and Gesar, re-created by the four authors, were futuristic true human-beings with open minds who wanted to practice love and make society of co-existences. They wanted to live as human-beings in the world of human-beings. Nevertheless, the violence and exclusiveness of the majority not to accept different and other species caused the characters' tragic ends.