明淸 문학의 “나”는 누구인가? - 時文 科文과 古文 序文 속 일인칭의 역학관계

Abstract

The ideal dynamic of preface composition in the Ming and Qing constitutes the inverse of the civil service examination regime: instead of an evaluation of texts whose authors are temporarily anonymous, prefaces to literary collections should result from face-to-face acquaintance and ensuing friendship, followed eventually by an exchange of texts. Increasingly over the course of the Ming and Qing, prefaces make use of the first-person pronoun yu to draw the reader into the intimate friendships that serve as context for the sharing of writings. On looking more closely into the new popularity of first-person usages, however, we find that the apparent contrast with civil service examination writing is neither trivial nor simple: yu serves to indicate that the individual voice has emerged as a newly pressing problem in this period. Indeed, in other prefaces, the first-person wu begins to index a more abstract, even hypothetical mood, reminding the reader of the complicated dynamics of abstraction and reflexivity characteristic of the “representative speech” thought to define modern prose examination essays (shiwen) as a genre.BR Classical prose (guwen) of the Ming and Qing makes itself a comfortable home in opposition to examination essays as a genre and consistently represents itself as a privileged expression of the author’s inner state. Yet insofar as classical prose was produced and consumed through social practice, this distinction between writing for oneself and writing for another turns out to be difficult to maintain. The particular emphasis some Qing preface writers place on concrete accounts of personal relationships is symptomatic of a broader unease with this alienated literary sociality: prefaces to collected writings tend to become more careful about distinguishing between individuals that the preface writer knows personally and those he does not. It should come as no surprise that in the seventeenth century, once “speaking for others” had become the conventional standard for examination writing, and writing prefaces for their social exchange value had come to dominate the literary market, authors’ choice of first-person pronoun becomes increasingly fraught.