본문 바로가기
  • Home

A Criticism of the Insistence on Encouraging Good and Punishing Evil in Old Korean Novel

JEONGWON LEE 1

1경기대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In this study, I want to criticize the insistence on encouraging good and punishing evil in Old Korean Novel. Encouraging good and punishing evil is regarded as a important feature of Old Korean Novel. The issues of this insistence are two. The first is that Old Korean Novel is always composed of encouraging good and punishing evil. And the second is that the theme of Old Korean Novel is always encouraging good and punishing evil so that it can’t reflect the real world. There were some articles that refuted this insistence with the universality of this morality in art. According to these articles, encouraging good and punishing evil has always been a universal theme of art so that it is unfair to criticize the moral feature of Old Korean Novel. These articles show that the insistence on encouraging good and punishing evil in Old Korean Novel originated in the attempt of building new history of modern novel. But these articles could not refute the existence of the moral fact and the unfair evaluation of the history of modern novel about Old Korean Novel. In this paper, I tried to shift the perspective of this matter. Because the plot or theme and more the value of novel could be evaluated in reception aesthetics not in authorial purpose or formalism. The new issues of this are three. First, from the point of view that reception of reader about text, the relationship between the authorial purpose and the embodiment of text is very unstable. Second, from the point of view that text can be completed to work only by the reception of reader, the insistence that the plot and theme of Old Korean Novel is always encouraging good and punishing evil assume a transcendental structure in disregard of reader’s reception. So this insistence is a kind of dictatorship of interpretation. Third, from the point of view that the reader usually aspire to explore the higher understanding about the self and the world, this insistence do not admit the diversity of reader’s reception but only moral enlightenment. And this is not true because the aim of actual reading can not restricted within morality.

Citation status

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