고전적 몸과 근대적 몸- 『큐피드와 프시케』와 『미녀와 야수』를 중심으로 (Classic Body and Modern Body in "Cupid and Psyche" and "Beauty and the Beast")

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국비교문학회
· 수록지 정보 : 비교문학 / 44호 / 59 ~ 88페이지
· 저자명 : 김종갑

초록

What is the beauty of the human body? The history of philosophy and
then of aesthetics has been perpetually perplexed with this thorny question.
Socrates in Greater Hippias confessed, "All that is beautiful is difficult."
The difficulty of defining beauty increases due to the discursive divisions
of "inside" and "outside," mind and body. The philosophical inquiry into the
nature of beauty was performed by posing the object of inquiry against
itself. that is, into inner beauty(goodness) against physical beauty. This
paper is an attempt to trace back to the pre-philosophical scene of human
beauty before such a division took place, where beauty was a unified and
integrated whole. Then the question is of course, how the beauty before the
inner division could be traced. There were myths and oral folk tales before
philosophy. It is in the world of such oral folk tales that the hero or the
heroine is as beautiful in appearance as he or she is good at heart. But as
oral tales were transcribed into written texts, human beauty began to
undergo inner division and become its opposite, beautiful in appearance but
ugly at heart. One of the best texts to show such a transformation of beauty
into its opposite is "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale type, Mme Leprince
de Beaumont's "La Belle et la Bête" being the most famous edition of such
a type. As is well known, de Beaumont's text is a modernized version of
Lucius Apuleius' "Cupid and Psyche" which in turn has oral folk tales as
its pre-texts. This paper compares and analyzes these two texts in order to
prove that human beauty Apuleius represented as a whole is internalized
and moralized in the hands of de Beaumont. Contrary to Apuleius, de
Beaumont could not affirm human beauty without internalizing it. It is in
88 비교문학 제44집 (2008년 2월)
the de Beaumont's world that even the ugly beast is beautiful if his heart
is good while the most handsome man is ugly if his heart is evil. The
modernity of her stories lies in such an inner and outer split: human body
is not a totality. And the bodily beauty is dislocated from its depth and is
transformed its opposite, mind: only the mind is the locus of beauty. This
paper concludes with the methodological proposition that the modern
mind-body division is the symptom of the modern body whereas the classic
body is a unified whole.

영어초록

What is the beauty of the human body? The history of philosophy and
then of aesthetics has been perpetually perplexed with this thorny question.
Socrates in Greater Hippias confessed, "All that is beautiful is difficult."
The difficulty of defining beauty increases due to the discursive divisions
of "inside" and "outside," mind and body. The philosophical inquiry into the
nature of beauty was performed by posing the object of inquiry against
itself. that is, into inner beauty(goodness) against physical beauty. This
paper is an attempt to trace back to the pre-philosophical scene of human
beauty before such a division took place, where beauty was a unified and
integrated whole. Then the question is of course, how the beauty before the
inner division could be traced. There were myths and oral folk tales before
philosophy. It is in the world of such oral folk tales that the hero or the
heroine is as beautiful in appearance as he or she is good at heart. But as
oral tales were transcribed into written texts, human beauty began to
undergo inner division and become its opposite, beautiful in appearance but
ugly at heart. One of the best texts to show such a transformation of beauty
into its opposite is "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale type, Mme Leprince
de Beaumont's "La Belle et la Bête" being the most famous edition of such
a type. As is well known, de Beaumont's text is a modernized version of
Lucius Apuleius' "Cupid and Psyche" which in turn has oral folk tales as
its pre-texts. This paper compares and analyzes these two texts in order to
prove that human beauty Apuleius represented as a whole is internalized
and moralized in the hands of de Beaumont. Contrary to Apuleius, de
Beaumont could not affirm human beauty without internalizing it. It is in
88 비교문학 제44집 (2008년 2월)
the de Beaumont's world that even the ugly beast is beautiful if his heart
is good while the most handsome man is ugly if his heart is evil. The
modernity of her stories lies in such an inner and outer split: human body
is not a totality. And the bodily beauty is dislocated from its depth and is
transformed its opposite, mind: only the mind is the locus of beauty. This
paper concludes with the methodological proposition that the modern
mind-body division is the symptom of the modern body whereas the classic
body is a unified whole.

참고자료

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