The Study of Dragons Reflected In Beowulf and In Korean Myths and Folktales

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 대구대학교 다문화사회정책연구소
· 수록지 정보 : 현대사회와 다문화 / 9권 / 1호 / 163 ~ 193페이지
· 저자명 : 이동춘

초록

The figure of the dragon is one of the highest crystallizations of human imagination, psychology, culture and ideology. Beliefs in its actuality, ideas of its images, and descriptions of its activities have prevailed all over the world and circu- lated within different cultures since antiquity. The dragon has been a popular motif in art as well as in literature almost as long as it has existed in human imaginations.
Scholars have noticed this phenomenon and made their research to solve the geo- graphic origin of the universal dragon. Some “Finnish” scholars reconstructing the diffusion of folk narratives, indicate that folk symbols move from “more-advanced” to “less-advanced people.” They reject such theories of origin as polygenesis or independent invention of folk images, the origin based in the primitive mentality or as the expression of an unconscious archetype. Another assertion that the dragon has been invented independently throughout the world in accordance with the cul- tural peculiarity of each country might sound attractive to those who object to the chauvinistic attitude of the “Finnish” scholars in searching for the original dragon.
Similarly, however, this idea is not as persuasive as that of the “Finnish” school ei- ther, since we cannot completely deny the fact that the dragon is a cultural product which may travel from one place to another within the same category of culture, for example, from the Middle East to Europe, and from China to Japan and Korea. In- stead of searching for the unique origin of the dragon which responds to the cultural needs of each nation or for the process of diffusion of its origin from the civilized to the uncivilized, regardless of the cultural differences between the countries, bringing our focus to the diffusion of the dragon within the countries which are in the category of the same or similar culture is more helpful and less controversial for the study of the dragon. As the dragon in Beowulf is one of the products invented in the cul- tural environment of the Scandinavian tribes, in a broader sense, that of a Western culture, so are dragons in Korean myths and folktales born through the influence of the mother country of Asian culture, China. It is meaningful to make a comparison and analysis of the morphology and of symbolization between the western dragon reflected in Beowulf and the eastern dragon in Korean narratives. Beyond the con- trasting elements which result from the cultural and ideological difference between East and West, the universality of the dragon from a psychological angle is another aspect to be investigated through the analysis of Beowulf.

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