겸재 조태억 문학론 검토 試論

Abstract

Gyeumjae Jotaeeok is one of the representative literary figures of Soron Faction in the late Joseon Dynasty and enjoyed excellent literary reputation in that era. Despite such reputation, however, there has not been a comprehensive study on the entire literary world of Jotaeeok, and his literary theory has not been discussed at all. This situation is thought to be due to the limitations of the data that he did not leave a writing his literary theory.
 However, if you look at the articles that evaluated Jotaeeok's literature or the articles that Jotaeeok evaluated other writers and works, you can get a glimpse of his literary theory. The evaluation of Jotaeeok's literature is that his work is based on writer's feelings and contents of writings rather than rhetoric or technical skill, and poetry and prose are natural, both expression and composition are appropriate, and in the creation of poetry, the design and utilization of poetical imagination and poetic word are natural, and proficient. He denied poetry full of technique by pursuing newness. This assessment is similar to the assessment that Jotaeeok made for other writers and works. In his evaluation of literary works and writer, Jotaeeok emphasized the authenticity of the author's emotion revealed in poetry and prose, so he focused on the contents of poetry and prose and the author's emotion contained in poetry and prose rather than formal and rhetorical aspects, and emphasized the learning and training for the creation of poetry and prose, and when the accumulated inside of the author was naturally revealed, the poetry and prose was considered to be excellent. He therefore considered that he did not have to try to use a lot of power, a strange or a poetic word full of technique.
 However, if Jotaeeok's literary theory is summarized like this, his literary theory does not deviate much from the universal literary theory of the period. If so, Jotaeeok's literary theory is not Jotaeeok's literary theory but rather a universal literary theory of the times. And Jotaeeok accepts such universal literary theory as much as possible and creates and criticizes the work. However, his literary theory is in the same position as the universal literary awareness of the period. But his literary theory and work's literary value are not lost just because he created and evaluated his works according to such literary theory. It is because it has the same perception as the universal perception of an era and it is not a legitimate evaluation to lower the person's perception and the value of the work he created because he created the work that most meets the perception.