This study aims to explain the principle and operating features of the reproduction system of Korean modern literature through the comparative analysis of time-series. The reproduction cycle of modern literature is composed of four systems such as lit...
This study aims to explain the principle and operating features of the reproduction system of Korean modern literature through the comparative analysis of time-series. The reproduction cycle of modern literature is composed of four systems such as literary debut, authorization, enjoyment and reader-to-writer debut. The study adjusts the contents and meanings of each system and analyzes their mutual relations.
Research and investigation on related materials were done simultaneously. The first work was to make a list of materials related with the reproduction system of modern literature. The four tasks on the materials like investigation, collection, classification and input were done in terms of media and time. The material collection in two volumes will be published. The materials provided an important basis for the analysis of the characteristics of the reproduction system of modern literature and its meanings in the literary history.
The results of the study are as follows.
First, the writer and the reader were the two prime motors of the reproduction system. The literary debut system made a literary field where the mutual influential relationship between the writer and the reader was established. In the 1910s to mid 1940s, the young people and students formed the main group of readers. The literary debut system linked the culture pursuit of the young people and students to literary aspiration. The literary debut system of some medium attempted to spread to the readers the 'literary idea' of a certain literary circle. But the medium's success or failure was mainly decided by the readers' habitus and capacity. The readers internalized the 'literariness' of literary texts, which, in turn, led to the reproduction of the writer through the change of the internalized to the engine of creative writing. Such process reflected the dynamics of the reproduction system of Korean modern literature.
Second, the reproduction system gave birth to the power politics in the literary society. The change of hegemony among media directly influenced the ups and downs of the reproduction system, which caused the change of the main stream of the literary form. Literary criticism, which is a typical form of authorization, identified the borders between the writer, reader and genre basing on the literary thoughts and aesthetic principle. It also produced literary authority by establishing the internal hierarchy between the writer, reader and genre.
Third, the advertisements of literary books and the censorship of the colonial authorities had influence on readers' habitus and literary enjoyment. The book advertisements distinguished high-grade literary art from popular literary art, which caused the division of readers' class and appearance of the hierarchy of aesthetic habitus. Censorship was an important index which could explain the colonial features of the reproduction system.
The canonization of literary works was a system which aimed to idealize valuables of human community. In the late 1930s, the canonization began and secured its ideological basis from the idea of national literature. The literary works on the list of canonization are still recognized as authoritative texts for literary education.
Consequently, the study discovered that the repetition of the reproduction cycle has formed the 'modernity' and ' literariness' of Korean modern literature and that the reproduction system still plays an important role as a systematic and aesthetic origin of Korean modern literature.