Literature as Art in Colonial Period Short Stories
| Charles D. La Shure | |
| |
| Name in Latin Alphabet: | Charles D. La Shure |
|---|---|
| Nationality: | USA |
| Affiliation: | Hankuk University of Foreign Studies |
강연 소개
In 1905, Korea was coerced into signing an unequal treaty with Japan that stripped Korea of its diplomatic sovereignty. Five years later, Japan formally annexed Korea, beginning thirty-five years of colonial rule that ended only with Japan's defeat in World War II. This dark period in modern Korean history influenced every aspect of Korean culture and society in ways that are still being felt today.
Korean literature is one such aspect, as authors struggled to come to grips with the reality of life under increasingly oppressive colonial rule. Some authors were determined to resist this rule and denounce the Japanese, but they could not do so openly because of censorship and so chose guerrilla tactics over frontal assaults, relying on allusion, metaphor, and other indirect techniques. Their works are remembered as an important part of Korean literary history and an expression of the indomitable spirit of independence. Other authors cast their lot in with the colonial rulers, perhaps because they had studied in Japan and admired what they saw as an advanced culture or a door to enlightenment, or perhaps because they simply grew tired of fighting. There works may have seen some commercial success at the time of their publishing, but are largely forgotten today. Of course, these are just the endpoints of a broad spectrum, and Korean authors from the colonial period can be found all along this spectrum.
There were some authors, though, who did not deal directly with the fact of colonial rule, instead choosing to focus on life in as non-political a sense as possible, often the life of the lower-class. These authors certainly had a message to convey, but they took pride in the artistry of their works, and it was this artistry that gave their works vitality. This may sound rather obvious, but the literature of authors like these represents one phase in the development of literature in Korea: the perception of literature primarily as art and not as a vessel for ideology. In order to fully appreciate this idea, we first need to go back in the history of Korean literature to examine the philosophical underpinnings of these two views of literature. We will see these views are in fact not new, and that the conflicting views of literature seen in the colonial period were just the latest manifestations of them. Then, to ground this in the literature itself, we will take a look at two authors and two of their representative works.
강연 영상
Literature as Art in Colonial Period Short Stories
