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The Community of Taste and Girl's Melodrama—A Study on the Novel in Girl Student (Ryeohakseng)

Kim Yangsun 1

1한림대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This thesis analyzed the serial novels and short stories in the magazine Girl Student, which crossed the generational and gender characteristics of literature-culture in the 1960s~1970s. The purpose was to extract the common interests and sensibilities of girls and to ultimately signify their collective identity of the middle of the 1960's. In this paper, the characteristics of novels are defined as gendered 'community of taste' and 'girl's pure melodrama'. In 'community of taste-western classical literature, popular culture, and girl's club', I noticed that the girls have appropriated common tastes and sensibilities from popular culture such as that ranging from movies and popular songs to western classical novels and music, from pure romantic feelings to existential anguish. They practiced the required moral soundness but also enjoyed their peer group's culture. In 'girl's 'pure' melodrama-pure love and friendship', I saw that the novels ended well that the girls who wanted to escape from their defective family, became enlightened by dramatic events, overcame puberty, and returned to the institution of school and family. On the other hand, there was a melodramatic element that induced dramatic and emotional excess such as the secret of birth, the abuse of family or siblings, accidental encounters or accidents, romantic love, or forbidden love. That is, it had the characteristics of 'pure' melodrama that combined popularity and enlightenment. The readers of Girl Student could acquire the daily cultures and the cultures of their peer group, the importance of friendship and solidarity beyond love and passion, jealousy and envy between men and women. So they could form a community of emotions. In conclusion, Girl Student reproduced the education and norms for the teenage women through the euphemistic device of the novel. This can be evaluated as the unique characteristic of Girl Student, which is different from other women's magazines or gender-neutral magazines for teenagers.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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