일본고전문학에 나타난 당대 전기소설『유선굴(遊仙窟)』의 수용과 재창조성－헤이안(平安)시대 모노가타리(物語)를 중심으로－

Abstract

This article analyzes the co-relationship between Yuseongul, a Tang-dynasty romantic(Jeongi) novel and Monogatri in the Heian age, particularly regarding the acceptance and recreation of the former in the ancient Japanese literature. Yuseongul, which is regarded as the first foreign literatured imported into Japan, is a representative Jeon-gi romance about a love with a celestial maiden in the Tang dynasty and played the most important role in the birth of an ancient Japanese novel, Monogatari. After importing the culture of Tang dynasty, a great number of male authors in the nobility was fascinated by the imaginary world of Taoist hermits and their love with a fairy nymph. In this respect, Yuseongul, which tells the story of love and separation between lovers, was accepted as a great specimen and also provided a representative form for the romance the Heian noble men yearned to create. The aesthetics that is idealized in the romance of Taoist hermits is spiritual refinement in an isolated place far from our everyday world. This literary form was a way that the contemporary noble men with the great knowledge of Chinese characters and literature express themselves. Furthermore, the popularity of refined literary tastes in the Heian age reveals their wishful fantasy to live on the ideas of Taoism, that is, the life of a hermitic doyen.