시각텍스트로 본 주신구라(忠臣蔵)

Abstract

Culture in an era spreads to the public as it goes through interaction between accumulated common knowledge and universalized experience through the process of collective acceptance. A text works as a continuum continuously moving, and giving and taking influence each other, not as a completed object. All the texts are used and read as a fruit of communication called exchange and sharing. As common knowledge mass-produced through visual information is interpreted as a familiar topic to the public and directed in the new taste and way called pictorial material and the play, it is connected to cultural phenomena in an era. The past incidents are reproduced as a literary work through various cultural devices such as literature, play, and painting. They change into a topic, recreate as works, and spreads through various media. Topics in vogue attempt various communications with people living at that time that the public shares. Distribution and dissemination of publications played a big part in spreading knowledge and refinement. The circumstances like this played a factor of forming common awareness in the Edo Age and was connected to popularization of culture. Chushingura appeared through many literary works transcending genres such as literature, play, and painting in an Edo Age. It was the familiar and universalized popular text that anyone who lived a life in an Edo Age was able to understand in common as one topic was enlarged and reproduced, and spreaded into various genres. This popularity worked as a chance of expanding a kind of play culture as it was connected to various transformations of Chushingura episode and image. Chushingura worked as a language of the same age, exceeding the simple text to the wider public as it changed the system and content in accordance with a trend of the times due to the demand. Common awareness toward Chushingura appeared among the public as it was variously read and interpreted. Even if one topic recreated through many types of media was able to be seen as intention of a hit jumped on the popularity, it played an important role in spreading common topics all over the culture. This study attempted to investigate the development process up to the time that a popular topic called Chushingura dismantled and reorganized the original, and accepted as a literature that the public shared in step with the social situation at the time in the Edo Age through the approach method of cultural history throughout the Edo Age using the visual text based on Ukiyo-e. Accordingly, the study aimed to understand the background that the public text was established and its characteristics The study also suggested what kind of change one topic brought about in establishing the public's mutual communication in the Edo Age, and searched its flow, how topical incidents were reproduced by attempting to change into the form suitable for each genre in the way of identifying the acceptance aspect of Chushingura used as a popular culture by the media of cultural device such as literature, play, and painting.