최재서의 『문학원론』: 외적 질서와 내적 회한 (On Choe Jaisou’s Theory of Literature: The Outer Order vs Inner Repentance)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 영미문학연구회
· 수록지 정보 : 영미문학연구 / 27호 / 85 ~ 116페이지
· 저자명 : 송승철

초록

The current study of Choe Jaisou’s critical works suffers two discontinuities due to his active collaboration with the Japanese regime in the late colonial period. This defect in his career has caused almost all the studies of his achievements to be delimited in range to his pre-1940s works. In other words, Choe as a scholar in the English studies after the 1945 liberation has been almost out of sight up to now.
This study is a critical revaluation of Choe Jaisou’s Theory of Literature (1957), allegedly representative of his post-liberation career. Choe set out to write a general introductory book on the nature and function of literature when he took up a class on the theory of literature during the Korean War, which turned out to be a book with a strikingly unique format and high level of intelligence, compared with many other books of the genre published at that time. But what continues to bother scholars of his later generation is the fact that theses merits are densely entangled with some fatal drawbacks which mar his creative and rare critical insights.
For a revaluation, Choe’s Theory of Literature is approached from four directions: the arrangement of literary themes, his view of literature, the descriptive method, and his interpretation of the history of English Literature. In the process of close reading of Theory of Literature and his other major works of post-liberation period as well, the present author tries to read the work in question by placing him in a wider context of not only Korean but British and American English studies of the time. The result is that all his characteristic literary view and descriptive style show certain ambivalent but sustaining tendencies. Choe’s view of literature as order shows a high level of similarity with Anglo-British version of liberal democratic theories, and in that sense, it can be likely to leave a room of being interpreted as a repentance or reflection in detour of his past historical errors. Even so, his reflection does not go a long mile. His liberal view of order presupposes the necessary existence of evil, which helps diminish actual feeling about the contemporary sufferings of post-war Korean society.

영어초록

The current study of Choe Jaisou’s critical works suffers two discontinuities due to his active collaboration with the Japanese regime in the late colonial period. This defect in his career has caused almost all the studies of his achievements to be delimited in range to his pre-1940s works. In other words, Choe as a scholar in the English studies after the 1945 liberation has been almost out of sight up to now.
This study is a critical revaluation of Choe Jaisou’s Theory of Literature (1957), allegedly representative of his post-liberation career. Choe set out to write a general introductory book on the nature and function of literature when he took up a class on the theory of literature during the Korean War, which turned out to be a book with a strikingly unique format and high level of intelligence, compared with many other books of the genre published at that time. But what continues to bother scholars of his later generation is the fact that theses merits are densely entangled with some fatal drawbacks which mar his creative and rare critical insights.
For a revaluation, Choe’s Theory of Literature is approached from four directions: the arrangement of literary themes, his view of literature, the descriptive method, and his interpretation of the history of English Literature. In the process of close reading of Theory of Literature and his other major works of post-liberation period as well, the present author tries to read the work in question by placing him in a wider context of not only Korean but British and American English studies of the time. The result is that all his characteristic literary view and descriptive style show certain ambivalent but sustaining tendencies. Choe’s view of literature as order shows a high level of similarity with Anglo-British version of liberal democratic theories, and in that sense, it can be likely to leave a room of being interpreted as a repentance or reflection in detour of his past historical errors. Even so, his reflection does not go a long mile. His liberal view of order presupposes the necessary existence of evil, which helps diminish actual feeling about the contemporary sufferings of post-war Korean society.

참고자료

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