Intermedial Aesthetics: Still Images, Moving Words, and Written Sounds in Early Twentieth-Century Korean Cinematic Novels (Yeonghwa Soseol)

Abstract

In recent years, there has been, what some, including W.J.T. Mitchell, have termed, a “visual turn” where our encounters and experiences of the world have become increasingly more visual, even in the literary realm. The recognition that writers and literary works have long been engaged with the visual technologies of language has opened up a field of inquiry that has allowed scholars to further probe the relationship between literary works and the other arts, especially the visual, beyond standard literary criticism to cultural studies. This study is particularly interested in the relationship between literature and photography, film, and radio in early twentieth-century Korea. More specifically, it investigates the genre of yeonghwa soseol (cinematic novels) to consider the questions of not only literature’s cinematic turn but also the ways in which the newly forged relationship between literature and new technologies and new media affected the practices of creating literature itself. In looking at the emergence of this genre as well as through the analysis of a specific work by Sim Hun, this study hopes to show how the emergence of new print media, film, photography, and radio did not necessarily create discrete media arts but was entwined in a symbiotic relationship with each other and with traditional literary forms through which they generated new reading, viewing, and hearing experiences.