박완서 문학의 세대론적 특성과 의미－1990년대 자전소설을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper discusses Park Wan－seo’s autobiographical novels published in the 1990s and tries to grasp generational characteristic and significance of Park Wan－seo’s literature. The autobiographical reflection and memory narrative are characteristics found throughout Park Wan－seo’s literary works. Generational perspective was introduced as an alternative identity replacing the existing collective identity of the Cold War, which throws new light on reading Park Wan－seo’s autobiographical novels. In Mother’s Stake, Park Wan－seo mourned ‘mother’ generation who shared the universal scar from the Korean War yet experienced different details and became a witness of the era representing own generation. Against oblivion of the 1990s, Who Ate up All the Shinga and Was that Mountain Really were written as autobiographical novels to recall the pre－war generation’s experiences during the pre－division era of the Korean Peninsula and the Korean War. This new approach repeatedly describes the memory of pre－division home and the Korean War yet goes far beyond mere nostalgia of old age. Park Wan－seo’s literary expressions of 1990s are manifestation of generational self－awareness and keen sense of contemporaneity. Minimizing novelistic embellishment differentiates the 1990s works from previously published autobiographical novels. The autobiographical novels in the 1990s become the embodiment of Park Wan Seo’s literary identity as they secure synchronism not only recording the Korean War as a historic event past and gone but also connecting it to a contemporary origin that is still operating in the present.