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Popular Narrative and The “Ethical Turn” in Literature

Jinhyoung Lee 1

1건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The “ethical turn” in literary criticism is the significant stream which try to restore the relation of literature and reality(society) and to reflect newly on that relation after post-structuralism or deconstructuralism. This paper aims at the examinaton on the form of “ethical turn” in literary criticism centered on Zhenzhao Nie’s An Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism(文学伦理学批评导论, 2014), and the discussion of the form of relation of literature and society or the way of intervention of ethics in literary criticism. To deal with the problem of the lack of ethics in Chinese literature, Nie explains the definition of the man as the ethical being, the ethical redefition of literature, and the ethical structure of literary text. Firstly, on the basis of Darwin’s theory of evolution he defines the man as the being which made by ethical choice. The ability to distinguish good and bad(ethical consciousness) is the standard to distinguish the man and animals. In this, the nature of Sphinx as the combination of the human-brain and animal-body is named as “Sphinx factor”, and the hybridity of ‘human factor’ and ‘animal factor’ is considered as the essense of the man. Secondly, on the basis of the definition of the man as the ethical being he tries to do the ethical redefinition of the notion of literature. To do this redefinition, he explains the various forms of that two factors, and traces the ethical origin of literature anthropologically. And finally he explains the ethical structure of literary text. The ethical structure consists of ethical lines and ethical knots, and the ethical knots make the ethical delemma, ethical paradox, ethical confusion, ethical identity, etc. Nie’s ethical literary criticism has two problems. The one is the oscillation between historicist approach and trans-historicist approach, the another is the ambiguity of the social function of literature (the notion of ‘moral teaching’). But, ethical literary criticim is meaningful to study on korean narratives and literary criticism. Because nowaday the ethics of literature or the social responsibility of literature is the significant issue. And ethical literary criticism seek to do “cooperation” with another theories to avoid its simplification.

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