Yi Sang Research Articles

이상의 ｢날개｣와 최인호의 ｢타인의 방｣에 나타난 고립과 소외 고찰

This comparative study analysed Wings of Yi Sang and A Room of Strangers of Choi In-ho together. Though Wings and A Room of Strangers have a 35-year gap between the publication dates, but these stories have a common theme and literary trend; First, the two stories depict humans who are alienated from modern capitalist society, and second, both works contain modernist elements that include surrealism and existentialism. Therefore, this essay examined Wings and A Room of Strangers in two aspects: surrealist technique and existentialist philosophy, focusing on the motifs of ‘room’ and ‘relationship’. In both stories, rooms are main spaces and very important to imply the themes, and male characters suffer from self-division because of relational failure with their wives. These two works, showing similar spatial motifs and relational structures, present each aspect of modernism in the 1930s and 1970s. Wings as a modernist story in the 30s reveals self-consciousness and flow of consciousness, while Room of Strangers marks the beginning of the postmodern era through the literary formation of fetishism and self-division. Even if it were clear that two authors–Yi Sang and Choi In-ho as modernist writers share the narrative techniques and motifs, the use and effect of surrealism are represented differently in their respective works - Wings and A Rooms of Stranger, and the status of the subject and self is also different. In conclusion, this study found that the theme of modernist literature changes with the times, and that the individual works of the two modernist writers were uniquely created according to the different situation of the times and the literary character of the writer.

조선시대 학자들의 科文 학습에 대한 비판과 회의적 수용 양상

The purpose of this study is to examine the controversies surrounding criticism and skeptical acceptance of learning Gwamun among scholars of the Joseon Dynasty in order to explore their academic orientation and perception of reality.
 Yi Ik(李瀷) is one of the scholars who strongly refused Gwamun, and he pointed out that Gwamun adversely affects the writing of sentences as well as scholars and causes deterioration of the country and customs. The main reasons for criticizing and raising problems against Gwamun were widely divided into the attitude of criticizing Gwamun and revering the classical literature, issues related to cultivation of mind and ethical behavior, and emphasis on educational features for keeping an eye on the insincere customs of scholars. Yi Sik(李植), Yi Soo-kwang(李睟光), and Yi Jeong- gui(李廷龜) praised the outstanding writing skills of the others and they shared the same attitude of criticizing Gwamun system and revering the classical literature. Meanwhile, Ki Dae-seung(奇大升), Lee Hyeon-il(李玄逸), and Ahn Jung-bok(安鼎福) emphasized an idea of studying for oneself and criticized that learning Gwamun would eventually interfere with the fundamental purpose of studying, which is to practice ethics and pursue right path. Shim Eon-gwang(沈彦光) and Park Se-dang(朴世堂) advised staying alert against the conventions of scholars who were devoted to the civil service exam and hoped that studies of scriptures would be helpful.
 On the other hand, The skeptical acceptance of Gwamun in aspects of reality and social backgrounds is divided as the mean to express the accumulated knowledge and learning, choice for supporting parents and reviving the family, demands for Gwamun, and educational function of Seowon(Confucian academy). Jung Yak-yong(丁若鏞) taught students on how to learn Gwamun and said that learning Gwamun and passing the civil service exam are the only ways to serve the king. Yun Gi(尹愭) explained how he had to learn Gwamun to support the family and parents. Yi Sang- jung(李象靖) also emphasized on the fundamental function of Seowon, which focuses on pursuit of studies while encouraging getting prepared for the civil service exam at the same time. These examples show that the realistic expectation for passing the civil service exam and gaining fame resulted in encouragement and demand for Gwamun.
 This study examined the criticism and acceptance of Gwamun during the Joseon Dynasty that focused on Confucianism and valued the attitude of keeping an aloof attitude from the civil service exam while taking a glance at how scholars discussed Gwamun and classical literature.

Korean Modernism’s Transnational Epiphanies

This essay tracks the circulation and anticolonial reinvention of European modernist epiphanies in Korean modernist prose. The intertextuality of these epiphanies, the authors contend, enables Pak T’aewŏn, Yi Sang, and Yi Hyosŏk to disclose the fraudulence of Japanese cosmopolitanism and imperial modernization, while focalizing the possibilities and limitations of engaging Asian colonial modernity with European forms. In localizing the European epiphany, and ambivalently acknowledging Japanese versions of it, the Korean modernists generate significant irony to interrogate the impulse to wrest concentrated moments of insight, “bliss,” or transcendence from the colonial everyday. Perhaps most disquieting is the realization that the exposure of imperialism’s “fakeness” lacks the capacity to remedy the material, or literary, conditions of coloniality. Ultimately, Pak, Yi Sang, and Yi Hyosŏk deploy the epiphany to assert the need for a more reflective, neither Japanese nor European, vision; they remain deeply pessimistic, however, about the consummation of one within colonial modernity.

Living in the modern society of colonial Joseon as a patient: a study on Yi Sang’s literature focusing on diseases and physical sicknesses

This study aims to discuss the body experiencing modern society and modernity realized through the body by analyzing the disease and physical sicknessness depicted in Yi Sang’s literature. Until now, Yi Sang’s literary research has focused on the subject’s death impulse (Thanatos) and the image of death in his works, so this study aims to present a new perspective on Yi Sang’s literature. Specifically, this paper explores works that illustrate diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis and examines the author’s subjective consciousness. In short, this paper discusses Yi Sang’s attachment to life, which appears as a sexual impulse (Eros), by analyzing narratives that mention prostitution and syphilis among Yi Sang’s works. Meanwhile, this article reveals the author’s guilt about his inability to function properly due to syphilis. Furthermore, this paper manifests how Yi Sang presents his sick body that experiences the modern society of colonial Joseon by describing how he implements the body with tuberculosis. Therefore, in each analysis process, this study reads Yi Sang’s specific texts by referencing his various works to understand his esoteric world and literary image. Moreover, this paper reveals that the author reflects on his critical reasons for such a modern society and violent hygiene discourse in his independent literary world and identity as a patient.

Queer Korea

Queer Korea

Colonial Repetition as Third World Textual Aesthetics: A Theoretical Approach

This paper discusses a national allegorical literary style labeled colonial repetition as one way in which literature represents the collective colonial mentality to respond to the oppression of colonization. The national allegory is a socio-political strategy proposed by Fredric Jameson for the reading of third world texts to address themes such as colonial violence, exploitation, paralysis, helplessness, and sense of loss [homeless at home]. The literary style of colonial repetition reflects collective symptoms through the repetition of words, phrases, and sentences in a text. This paper posits colonial repetition in Korean poet Yi Sang’s Crow’s Eye View as a characteristic of Jamesonian third world texts that articulate the tragic circumstances of the colonial system: national misery and national subalternity.

이상의 「날개」에서 나타나는 근대적 시간 개념과 미적 근대 공간 연구

이 논문에서는 이상의 「날개」에서 근대적 시간 개념이 “권태”이자 억압으로 드러나고 있음을 살펴보고, 그 권태와 억압에서 탈주하기 위한 근대적 주체의 미적 공간 인식인 촉각성이 미적 모더니티로 전개되는 양상을 연구한다. ‘합리성’에 근거한 과학적 시간인 근대적 시간은 주체의 의식을 통해 새로운 미적 경험으로 재창조한다. 「날개」에서 서술자 ‘나’는 아내가 지배하는 시간에 대한 강박증을 보인다. 그래서 「날개」의 서술자 ‘나’는 의식적으로 자신을 고립시키고 있다.<BR> 의식적인 자기 고립을 통해 형성된 내면이 바로 이상의 ‘권태(倦怠)’이다. 그에게 일상적인 시간은 무료함과 고통과 권태의 연속이다. 그렇기 때문에 그는 지각상태를 선언하거나 시계를 파기하거나 부정해버린다. 그리고 아내가 전통적 남-녀 관계를 전도시켜 얻는 쾌락에서 탈주하여 서술자는 촉각성을 인지한다.<BR> 이러한 촉각성에 대한 인식은 이상이 건축학도였다는 사실과 관련되어 있다. 『조선의 건축』에 모흘리-나기의 ‘촉각 연습’을 언급하기도 한 이상은 「동해」 등의 작품에서 촉각성에 관한 사유를 적극적으로 도입하였다. 촉각성, 즉 단일한 감각을 넘어선 복합적이고 다양한 감각ㆍ의미의 인지는 「날개」에서도 관찰된다. 「날개」 초반부에 등장하는 에피그램에 적극적으로 도입된 이 촉각성은, 아내의 방에서는 금지된다. 그곳에서는 단일한 감각만 인지할 수 있을 뿐이다. 그러나 서술자가 미쓰코시 백화점 옥상에서 사이렌 소리를 들었을 때, 그 촉각성은 건축재료와 근대적 가치들의 경계를 무화시키고, 감각과 감각이 서로 혼합되는 미적 모더니티를 획득하도록 만든다.

Le Urine

"Le Urine" is a surreal, avant-garde poem by the modernist Korean poet Yi Sang, written in 1931 and first published in Chosun and Architecture, a Japanese-language architecture journal in occupied Korea. Although Yi Sang published his first works in Japanese, he later published his work in Korean. "Le Urine" was written as part of his "Crow's Eye View" series of early poems.

영상매체에서 기호화되는 이상의 시 오감도(烏瞰圖)의 결핵 상상력 연구

영상매체에서 기호화되는 이상의 시 오감도(烏瞰圖)의 결핵 상상력 연구

Introduction

Introduction Bruce (bio) and Ju-Chan Fulton (bio) One of the most intertextual of contemporary Korean fiction writers, Kim Kyung-uk was born in 1971 in Kwangju, South Chŏlla Province. He earned a BA and an MA in English literature and Korean literature, respectively, from Seoul National University and teaches creative writing at Korean National University of Arts. Since his debut in 1993 with the novella "Outsider" (Autsaidŏ), published in Chakka segye (Writers world), he has produced more than a dozen story collections and novels. Kim is evaluated perhaps too facilely by the critics for incorporating elements of popular culture in his works—understandable when we consider the titles of stories and novels such as Morrison Hotel (Morisŭn Hot'el), "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?" (Nu ka K'ŏt'ŭ K'obein ŭl chugyŏnnŭnga?), and "Leslie Cheung Is Dead, You Say?" (Chang Kug-yŏng i chugŏttago?). But the importance of such works extends beyond mere parody to challenge readers to reevaluate cultural icons and stereotypes—a project that is central to modern Korean fiction, to judge from the multiple intertextual fictional renderings of icons from classical Korea, such as Hwang Chin-i, and the many contemporary retellings of some of Korea's best-known folktales, such as "The Woodcutter and the Nymph." Kim is especially interested in how individuals manage to re-invent themselves and/or live double [End Page 11] lives, and in crafting portraits of such characters he reflects writing by both Korean and non-Korean authors. In its gravitas and apocalyptic background "Young Hearts Never Grow Old" (Sonyŏn ŭn nŭkchi annŭnda, 2013), for example, echoes both P'yŏn Hye-yŏng's "Mallow Gardens" (Aoi kadŭn, 2003) and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The reading therapist in "Dangerous Reading" (Wihŏmhan toksŏ, 2006) resembles the suicide consultant in Kim Yŏng-ha's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (Na nŭn na rŭl p'agoehal kwŏlli ka itta, 1996) and would be at home in a story by John Cheever. And with his 2007 novel Kingdom of a Thousand Years (Ch'ŏn nyŏn ŭi wangguk), inspired by the story of Hendrik Hamel and his band of castaway Dutch sailors, Kim has reached far back into Chosŏn history for a most unusual tale of adaptation and survival. Kim's interest in intertextuality goes back at least as far as his apprenticeship in creative writing. In his acceptance speech upon being awarded the 2016 Yi Sang Literature Prize for "Ch'ŏnguk ŭi mun" (translated here by Soomin Yoo as "Heaven's Gate"), Kim observed that whenever he is about to submit a work for publication he realizes anew that he is a yŏngwŏnhan chimangsaeng ("forever-aspiring writer") who reads incessantly the works of his peers, regardless of their age. In doing so Kim reverts to the role of reader, understanding that without a readership Korean literature would be like the Titanic, with writers assuming the role of the doomed cruise ship's orchestra, which continued to play on even as the vessel was sinking. In recent years Kim has begun to attract attention among English-language readers. He is now represented in English by "The Queen of Love" (Yŏnae ŭi yŏwang), translated by Ryan Yu in Acta Koreana (2012); "Young Hearts Never Grow Old," translated by Deborah Smith in Azalea 6 (2013); "99%" (thus titled in Korean as well), translated by Jane Lee and Bruce Fulton in World Literature Today (2013); "Dangerous Reading," translated by Brother Anthony in Koreana (2014); God Has No Grandchildren, a collection of his [End Page 12] stories translated by Sunok Kang and Melissa Thomson (2015); and "Spray" (Sŭp'ŭrei), translated by Jason Woodruff in an online feature in Asymptote (2017). The following selection of Kim's writing includes a short essay by the author, translations of two of his stories, and the translation of an excerpt from his most recent novel. "The Mailman, Olivia Hussey, and Robert Redford" (Uch'ebu wa Ollibia Hasse wa Robŏt'ŭ Redŭp'odŭ) is included in his 1999 story collection Pet'i rŭl mannarŏ kada (Off to...

이상 시의 거울과 헤테로토피아

이상 시의 거울과 헤테로토피아

As the Crow Flies: Yi Sang’s Aerial Poetics

AbstractThis essay rereads the work of Yi Sang (1910–37) against the early twentieth-century revolution in aerial photographic technologies. It argues that the aerial view (and the problem of “blind sight” that attends it) functions as a dynamic organizing principle for understanding the complex network of technoscientific, political, and existential concerns driving Yi’s literary and graphic practice, across both his Japanese and his Korean works. Bringing together a comparative framework with select close readings, the essay shows how aeriality furnished Yi with a particular set of structures and signs with which to engage larger questions around the nature of seeing, the limits of objectivity and rationality, and the possibilities and politics of creative expression.

SHIFTS IN CHARACTERIZATION IN LITERARY TRANSLATION: REPRESENTATION OF THE “I”-PROTAGONIST OF YI SANG’S WINGS

Characterization (i.e., the way a character is lexicogrammatically constructed in a text) introduces and develops the reader’s mental representation of the character. Previous research shows that in fiction various means of characterization have been used to encode the character’s views of the world, the relationship between characters, and the underlying theme of the story. Considering the importance of characterization in fiction, this study aims to find out what effects the translator’s lexicogrammatical choices may have on characterization and the implied reader’s construction of the character. For this purpose, Yi Sang’s Nalgae (Wings) and its three English translations were compared in terms of how the “I”-protagonist is characterized in four key passages of the story. The theoretical framework for this study is transitivity, a Hallidayan system of how experiential meaning is represented in the clause.

The Architectural Meaning of the Seductive Domestic Spaces Described in Narratives: Yi Sang′s The Wings (1936) and Inho Choe′s Another Man′s Room (1971)

This paper aims to uncover the architectural meaning1 of the domestic spaces portrayed in two Korean modern short stories, Yi Sang′s The Wings (1936) and Inho Choe′s Another Man′s Room (1971). By carefully describing Seoul′s unique domestic spaces during two different time periods, a gisaeng2 house from the 1930s and a modern apartment unit from the 1970s, the two narratives qualitatively represent unique architectural conditions. In particular, with their detailed descriptions of architectural, material and immaterial elements and how these relate to a woman′s body, the stories produce seductive atmospheres poetically.In this sense, The Wings and Another Man′s Room show significant architectural meaning, and architectural practitioners and scholars should consider their potential as architectural references. By criticizing the contemporary stylistic and formal obsession in architecture as well as design education, this paper intends to highlight the fundamental meaning of architecture as the creation of emotionally and intellectually charged communicative and harmonious environments, in other words, ″attuned settings for significant human action,″ as they engage narrative forms.3

존재 회복을 위한 서사 : 이상, 『地圖의 暗室』론

존재 회복을 위한 서사 : 이상, 『地圖의 暗室』론

이상 시의 시적 자아와 인식 대상으로서 ‘여성’의 형상화 연구

이상 시의 시적 자아와 인식 대상으로서 ‘여성’의 형상화 연구

Correcting Annotation Errors and Mistranslation in Yi Sang’s Literary Texts - Focusing on Japanese poetry -

Correcting Annotation Errors and Mistranslation in Yi Sang’s Literary Texts - Focusing on Japanese poetry -

Translingual melancholy in Yi Sang's visual poetry

Translingual melancholy in Yi Sang's visual poetry

History Plays and Historical Studies Concerning Café-Maids in Colonial Korea -With a Focus on Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen and Showa 10, Our Joyful Young Days

History Plays and Historical Studies Concerning Café-Maids in Colonial Korea -With a Focus on Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen and Showa 10, Our Joyful Young Days

A study on imagery of skin senses on Yi Sang's poem

A study on imagery of skin senses on Yi Sang's poem