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The field of poetry in the 1930s and a direction in female writers’ poems: Focusing on Yoonsook Mo's (1933) early work, A Shiny Zone

  • Korean Language & Literature
  • 2009, (68), pp.229-252
  • Publisher : Korean Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Jin Hee Kim 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The 1930s, in the history of the Korean poetry, is when the modern poetics was established, via modernization of poetic techniques and broadening and deepening of thematic awareness. Yoonsook Mo, a female poet, started her career in this field of literary world. The status for female poets was hardly secured in the early 1930s. The appearance of Yoonsook Mo, with high praise of ‘the one and only female poet Joseon has,‘ was a remarkable event in the poetical circles of the 1930s. However, the criticism on Mo has mainly concerned her pro-Japanese creations and activities in the late 1930s, until recently. This paper investigates what import and implication Mo‘s works carry in the field of the contemporary literature. It looks away from the perspective of viewing her works in the early 1930s as preparation for pro-Japanese verses in the later years. It is an attempt not only to render proper evaluation to Mo‘s works which were composed prior to pro-Japanese activism, but to have a general understanding of her word of literature, as well. The mainstream criticism on the works in that period was principally regarding Mo‘s works from a viewpoint of genderization of sentiments. The interests of the major literary critics in Yoonsook Mo per se were considerable, but they generally ended up in criticizing sentimentalism, which eventually drove female poets out of the center of the literary circles. Despite the fact that the literary world was concentrating on sentimentalism and neglecting female writers who sang of nation and country, Mo created works of nation and country due to the combined influence by the familial environment with her father being an activist for national independence, the reinforced nationalism in association with the religious education in school, and her temperament, habitus, which was bound to have interests and participate in the reality. Considering that the subject of nation and country was mainly for male writers, these works of this female poet is deemed notable. The implication Mo‘s works are presenting in the history of literature is noticeable in that she made the first social connection through poems by recognizing ‘nim‘ (dear) as a nation in the social dimension, not in the individual dimension.

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