신경숙의 성장소설에 나타난 낭만성－˂어디선가 나를 찾는 전화벨이 울리고˃를 중심으로－

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the significance of romanticism in Somewhere a Telephone Is Ringing for Me, a growth novel by Shin Kyoung-sook. In the work, the romantic inclination is displayed through the pure sentimental love of the main characters and the reactionist nostalgia of romantic strollers as well as the sublimity of death. Going through wandering and frustration, young people in adolescence enter the mature phase of life through an attitude of accepting “death,” which continues to happen around them, and an attitude of reflecting on a cold-hearted city through the act of “walking.” However, death reproduced with sublimity and sentimental love that was appealing to girls worked to weaken the narrative of the growth novel. Even though it was a novel to demonstrate social consciousness, the author shows the reactionist nostalgia of the characters with the old palace, castle walls, and beautiful scenery, which were the objects of thinking accompanying the “walking” process of the main character. That is relatively distant from the aspects of social reality those days, which showed a fierce life. The novel has its limitations as the author’s awareness of the situations of the times had its spreading power weakened by “romanticism” in it.