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A Study on Unyeongjeon (雲英傳) as a Tragedy-Focusing on the Cognitive Gap and the Error of Judgement

Cho, Hyun Woo 1

1인천대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Though Unyeongjeon (雲英傳) has been regarded as the novel which criticized the feudalism in the Chosun Dynasty and advocated the free love, I tried to find what makes Unyeongjeon as a tragedy in this paper. Unyeongjeon is a novel with very complicated structure, because it is framed narrative with several frames. Most important frame of this text is related to the protagonist Unyoung’s remembrance as analepsis. Analepsis is the literary device in narrative, in which a past event is narrated at a point later than its chronological order in a story. Therefore it is unavoidable to occur the gap of information and cognition between the narrator who narrates the past in the present and the characters who went through a variety ot things at that time. Unyoung and Kim, the present narrators, have to remember and restate the past, especially including their misjudgement and wrong choice. In this process the present narrators get to know that the characters at that time did an error of discernment due to ignorance, to the lack of an essential piece of information. When the present narrators finally realize that there was no way to avoid destined catastrophe whatever they chose, Unyeongjeon becomes a tragedy. Suseongung (壽成宮) as the background of this text has a role to make their realization more tragic. Suseongung was the only place for Unyoung and Kim to be able to meet and love each other, whereas it was also the place for them to prohibit their love and disturb escape from there.

Citation status

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