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A Study on digression in Korean Contemporary Novels - Focusing on Choi In-hoon’s Seoyugi(Journey to the West)

Noh Dae-won 1

1제주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In the novel text, 'digression' is a narrative form that takes a moment to break away from the central subject that was originally dealt with. It is also a discourse form of wordy chats, long talk, rambling and repeats. It has been regarded as an unnecessary redundant discourse and has been excluded for a long time. But it has its own aesthetic and can be a clue to the new interpretation. This paper attempted to characterize novels and actual text criticism for full- scale rhetorical study on the oral discourse of novel texts. In Korean modern novels, the Korean texts are classified as follows: first, knowledge (intellectual) novels and ideological novels, second, postmodern novels and avant-garde novels, third, popularist roman-fleuve, fourth, novels containing everyday experiences and stories of everyday life, fifth, psychological and psychopathological novels. This paper focuses on the digressional discourse of Choi In-hoon's novel, Seoyugi(Journey to the West), so that the concrete text critique work can be linked with the typification work. Seoyugi can be understood as a changeable digressional format such as 'Sun Wukong', or as a structure of the labyrinth. This is a the (post)colonial intellectual’s fantastic story exploring the identity, and the tragedy of modern intellectuals surrounded by authoritative discourse.

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.