한국 현대소설에서 찾는 신화의 유산: 황석영의 『바리데기』 와 신경숙의 『엄마를 부탁해』 를 중심으로

Abstract

This article articulates legacies of religious myths that exist in Korean modern novels by analyzing two bestseller Korean novels of this century, Sok-Yong Hwangs Princess Bari and Kyung-Sook Shin s Please Look After Mom. In Princess Bari, Hwang presents ideas of the sacred that came from Korean traditional shamanistic myths, without having contemporary secular readers feel awkward about them. He depicts a model of the heroine who overcomes her own pain, is born again as a new being, and shoulders the suffering of the whole world. Bari is the heroine who stands against pain and absurdity of the world, asks the reason for them, and gropes for justice and peace. Unlike heroes or heroines with transcendental power in traditional religious myths who are often worshiped, the main character of the modern myth Hwang created is based on a universal humanism: a savior heroine who suffers and sheds tears for other people. Shins Please Look After Mom reaffirms Eliades argument that individual mothers have the image of universal mother or the mother goddess who is the origin of life to which every human being seeks to return. The Mom of this novel is described as the source of life and fertility, just like the mother earth in traditional myths. The Mom also longs to return to her own mother when she dies, demonstrating that the mythic idea that dying is returning to the mother earth is still present. When the main character talks in whispers to the statue of the mother Mary who embraces her dead son, the common mythic image of the universal mother is reemphasized.