국문학연구에서 문화연구의 적용과 한계

Abstract

This paper applied cultural studies to Korean literary works- The Toggy-jeon, The Chunhyang-jeon, The Island of Anonymity. I chose Gramsci’s hegemony theory and Frankfurt school’s critical theory out of cultural theories. It was Gramsci who first advocated aesthetic criticism as political criticism as part of the struggle for a new culture, positive, social and historical. Applying hegemony theory to The Chunhyang-jeon, there were three kinds of struggles of hegemony in the late Choson dynasty era. One group of readers read The Chunhyang-jeon as love roman. Another group of readers read it as a faithful woman’s story. The other group of readers read it as social novel toward man’s liberation. They would not stop to read it, and dared to rewrite the works. That was a strong struggle for winning hegemony. They produced 358 different versions of The Chunhyang-jeon. Applying critical theory to The Island of Anonymity, the same family village is a metaphor of mass society. Man‘s desire is over-oppressed by other’s gaze. Other’s gaze forms rule-power in the same family village. Mad man, Kkaechul act as the island of anonymity. Women in this village solve their sexual desire by having sexual intercourse with Kkaechul. Heroine, ‘Na’ also have intercourse with Kkaechul. So, she is alienated from her identity. Critical studies opposed positivism, empiricism, Marxism, and formalism. This theory interprets the literary work in the frame of culture totally. It also synthesizes text and context, the work and socio-culture. However, it should not lose its literariness and aesthetics and meaning from analyzing internal structure.