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Popular Songs of Goryeo and Language Play －Centering around “Song of Narye”－
Journal of Humanities
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This paper aims to explore from a new perspective the Goryeo dynastypopular songs in the category of shamanist songs, which had hitherto notbeen dealt with in earnest in the study of Goryeo songs. The new study willalso examine the meaning and the value of the shamanist popular songs. When it comes to Goryeo popular songs, “ardent love songs betweenmen and women” come first, although such obscene songs did notcorrespond to the whole literary genres of Goryeo songs. Besides,understanding Goryeo popular songs in the category of shamanist songs onlyfrom the perspective of obscene songs will prevent us from comprehensivelyunderstanding their literary value as such an attempt is liable to standardizethose works within a certain pattern. Therefore, we need to develop another strategy to fully understandGoryeo popular songs in the category of shamanist songs. But it is notalways necessary to relate what we call Goryeo popular songs in thecategory of shamanist songs to those songs sung by shamans. It is becausenot all the Goryeo popular songs in the category of shamanist songs arerelated to shamans’ songs. Thus, this paper attempts to understand from anew perspective “Song of Narye (literally, a song of narye ritual for driving out evil spirits)” – which is called one of Goryeo popular songs in thecategory of shamanist songs but is not actually related to a song of shamans. As a result, the quintessence of “Song of Narye” could have beenunderstood better when approached from the perspective of language play. Therefore, researchers of Goryeo popular songs are advised to be free fromthe standardized perspective of identifying them with obscene songs orshamanist songs.
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