본문 바로가기
  • Home

A Study on Intellectuals of the Liberation Period and ‘Seoul Streets’ in the Poetry of Lee Yong-ak from a Literary Geographic Perspective

Song-Ji seon 1

1전북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study approaches the relationship between intellectuals of theliberation period and ‘Seoul streets’ in the poetry of Lee Yong-ak from aliterary geographic perspective and attempts to reveal the aspects inwhich intellectualistic identity is respectively expressed in hometowns and‘Seoul streets’. Lee Yong-ak reproduces places of the people in a processin which he searches for directionality for his own literature. Here, placesbecome detailed locations in which the social practices of intellectualsoccur. While the pieces of most poets of the liberation period wereideological and inflammatory, the pieces of Lee Yong-ak differ fromtheirs because he found sites directly connected to the survival of thepeople and made their vivid voices into literary works. With this, literary geographic approaches provide valid perspectives infiguring out the nature of the literature of Lee Yong-ak during theliberation period. Literary geography views humans as geographic beingsand explains and understands the identity of man through relationshipsbetween characters and spaces within pieces. Existential understanding ofone human does not begin with a great story based on the universalityof time but rather from small stories based on the distinct characteristicsof places and literary geographic approaches towards literary pieces canbecome effective methods for understanding the individual lives of humans according to different places. Unlike at the end of Japanese imperialism, when he remained in hishometown at the frontier of history, the Lee Yong-ak of the liberationperiod tried to stand at the center of history, symbolized by the ‘streetsof Seoul.’ In studies that discuss the relationship between liberation periodintellectuals and ‘Seoul streets’, hometown place experiences at the end ofJapanese imperialism were provided to understand how Lee Yong-akarrived on ‘Seoul streets’ directly after liberation and to understand senseof identity changes in intellectuals according to placeness differencesbetween the hometown and ‘Seoul streets’. Therefore, this study examinedhow Lee Yong-ak was conflicted with social responsibility as anintellectual in his hometown at the end of Japanese imperialism and howhis poetry, life, and actions were integrated with ‘Seoul streets’ as anintellectual of the liberation period to express how places are a centralelement that compose the social lives of man.

Citation status

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

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