The objective of this study was to find the literary spirit of The Prose Age, a literary coterie magazine in the 1960s, and its position in the history of literature by analyzing works contained in the magazine. Literary coterie magazine The Prose Age...
The objective of this study was to find the literary spirit of The Prose Age, a literary coterie magazine in the 1960s, and its position in the history of literature by analyzing works contained in the magazine. Literary coterie magazine The Prose Age, which emerged in response to social phenomena in the 1960s, occupies a very crucial position in that it is the origin of new literature in those days and forms a context defining the subsequent flow of Korean literary circle history. The Prose Age aims to inherit the spirit of freedom inspired by the 4.19 Revolution and to realize it in literature.
Using their own strategy of generation theory, they reject old literature and move toward the establishment of new language and grammar. Works in The Prose Age are quite meaningful in that they are achievements from keen linguistic sensibility and personal consciousness. The confirmation of the subjectivity and autonomy of literature is considered the core of the 4.19 generation and The Prose Age. The Prose Age forms a very close influence relation not only with its coterie group but also with its contents - criticisms, translations, and creations - and through the relation it reveals literary theories that they pursue. Therefore, using specific texts of The Prose Age that have been discussed superficially until now, this study tries to analyze the literary spirit advocated by The Prose Age and its practice.
For this purpose, Chapter II examined the background of literary circles in the 1960s, which is the base of their literary spirit, and the nature of the coterie group that created The Prose Age. The experience of ‘freedom’ through the 4.19 Revolution and the (negative) experience of economic modernization from the 5.16 Coup D’IJtat were key turning points for the social modernization and the transition of literature in those days. Such social transformations in the 1960s bring forth the rise of the 4.19 generation in the history of literature and the consequent dissolution of established literary circles and radical generation shift. The 4.19 generation had ‘self-identity’ that was clearly distinguished from the previous generations by its homogenous generation sense, which came from their experience in the revolution. To them, the 4.19 Revolution was the discovery of rational and intellectual subjects and, at the same time, an event and landmark that assured them of the possibility of individuals’ reason and autonomy. It is also a generation sense unique to the 4.19 generation that they are the Hangeul generation who had democratic education and began to think in the Korean language. Through democratic education, they could lay the base of 4.19 and, in terms of language, could think more deeply and speak more freely. Based on their homogenous generation sense, the 4.19 generation promotes strategic severance from the old generation. The Prose Age is a practice of their desire to find their position as a subject of new literature out of their generation sense and strategy of generation theory. The coterie activities of The Prose Age led mainly by university students utilized symbolic capitals “liberal arts students of Seoul National University from provinces and majoring in foreign literature,” and defined their coterie magazine strictly as “university students’ literary magazine” distinguished from established literary circles. In that it limited those who made their debut in consideration of the level of their works, chose prose with consciousness of the literary topography in those days, and used university students as symbolic capitals, we can see that the composition of The Prose Age is a product of the aggregate of capitals owned by the young generation of literature, namely, the strategic deployment of cultural and social capitals. These coterie composition, edition attitude and contents of The Prose Age reveal its characteristics as a literary coterie magazine in the 1960s, which had not been displayed by previous literary circles. The Prose Age sets up its position as a literature group that belongs to a literary world through active differentiation from all the other existing literary circles in the external and internal aspects of literature.
Chapter III analyzed literary theories pursued by the coterie of The Prose Age through criticism. Criticism was for the theoretical exploration and establishment of the literary spirit of The Prose Age. Trying to create new literature while criticizing the literary culture of old generations, they admit the contemporariness of Western literature as a possibility of new literature to overcome Korean premodernism. That is, antipathy against or challenge to the existing literary circles is expressed through the internalization of the concept of literature learned from Western literature. As in Kim Hyeon’s Critical Study, Yeom Moo-woong’s Contemporariness Theories, and Kim Chi-soo’s Transformation of Writers and Literary Works, the coterie of The Prose Age criticizes existing literature based on Western literature theories and explores contemporariness revealed in the theories actively. The contemporary characteristics that they search for are self consciousness, discovery of individuals, and communication with readers through the self-consciousness of language based on the autonomy of literature. In his Critical Study, Kim Hyeon finds the self-consciousness of a critic who tries to capture the world through texts in the process of inquiring into the spirit of criticism and pays attention to the discovery of individuals and the discovery of ego as the origin (appearing through the revolution of illuminism) that enables the consciousness. Furthermore, it reveals the view of literature based on individuals’ subjective autonomy that views literature as an individual’s creation. As a Hangeul generation who has a peculiar perception of ‘language,’ they attempt to create a new language, which exists by itself, different from the old generations’ concept of instrumental language. This interest in language is linked also to the communicability of the language. That is, language has not only the aspect of aesthetics that reveals the writer’s personality but also the aspect of communication that is received in readers’ position. When language becomes an object rather than an instrument, it opens the ground of new interpretation instead of forcing unilaterally.
Chapter IV discussed how their literary aims are achieved through analyzing specific novels. Their efforts to carry the newness of their generation in a unique literary form are manifested mainly through inquiry into internality and linguistic experiment in creative novels. The jubilation of freedom in the 4.19 Revolution and the disillusion of modernization by the 5.16 Coup D’IJtat bring confrontation with self-division and skepticism at the moment they are established as a rational and autonomous subject. Therefore, many of novels in The Prose Age search for their own world in anxious consciousness through the exploration of individuals’ internality, and the search process is remarkable in the formative aspect. A unique characteristic of The Prose Age is that most of its novels pay high attention to the formative aspect. That is, they try various formative techniques and linguistic experiments while drawing fragmented realities and individuals’ inside. Literary works in The Prose Age expose the issues of ego, consciousness and impulse through combination of emotional concepts rather than the conventional narration method that reveals the issues of the world and things causatively and logically. Furthermore, negative consciousness and disillusion underlaid in the novels are the contents characteristics representing the 4.19 generation’s consciousness. They assume the world to be others, and try to reestablish their position through disillusion and negation. The other and the conflict are, at the same time, described as disillusion for individual-self who lives negatively in such a negative reality.
Chapter V discussed the position of literary coterie magazine The Prose Age in the history of literature. The Prose Age showed the process that a new literary world is formed through generation shift while the coterie guarantees and evaluates its own activities based on collective kind consciousness. They build up their own literary discourses through their commonness in literary ideas and tendencies. The Prose Age, which emerged together with the rise of the 4.19 generation, shows the peak of literary conscientization of ‘freedom’ discovered through 4.19. They look for the development of the inner logic of literature based on the autonomy of literature, and the literary ideas promoted by them form later the base of new literary discourses that form liberal literary theories through the aesthetic journey from The Prose Age to Four Seasons, 68 Literature and, lastly to Literature and Intellectual. Although the works of The Prose Age were incomplete experiments connoting absence, excess, confusion and disorder, they have a meaning in the history of literature in that their efforts to contain the literature of its own generation in a unique literary form through theories and practices constitute a starting point of new literature.
，韩语毕业论文，韩语论文 |
