박태원의 1940년대 연작형 사소설의 의미

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to provide analytical review of the complex, obscure psyche of the writer Park Tae-won as expressed in his serialized autobiographical novels written circa 1940 and to explore new interpretation and evaluation possibilities regarding his works. This is, in a way, a challenge to the existing views of his publications in late 1930s to 1940s where he is often portrayed as an author who joined hands with pro-Japanese forces of that time, having wholeheartedly empathized with Imperialist Japan's Pan-Asianism and the New Order ideology (Japan's wartime totalitarianism). Rather, Park Tae-won's works during the post-1940 era should be reviewed in the full context of the conflict and contradiction shown by other writers of the time through their "newspaper novels (novels serialized in daily newspapers)" as well as autobiographical fictions. At the same time, his novels should be evaluated from the standpoint that acknowledges the presence of the reinforced fascist mobilization mechanism centering around the iconic Emperor of Japan during late Japanese Colonial Period and the sanction of such presence. Considering these two-sided characteristics of the period in question, this researcher intended to provide a new evaluative approach to Park's "Self-Portrait" series by utilizing, as a clue, the Japanese creditor and the Koreans' name change coerced by Imperialist Japan appearing in Park's novel "Family Indebted (1941)". Based on this researcher's perspective presented herein, Park Tae-won's serialized autobiographical novels are in fact issue-laden, implicating his secretive as well as sensitive criticism of the Imperialist Japan's increasing control over the already planned economic system. Such interpretation regarding Park's works challenges us to understand the late Colonial Period Korean writers' literary works at a deeper level, for those writers and their publications of that time have those inherent obscure and complex qualities, deciphering of which at the surface level can only provide us with insufficient, unbalanced analysis and evaluation of their legacy. Unfortunately, many studies of the literature in that period appear to have imposed a limit where the writers and their works were interpreted by unquestioningly accepting political and propaganda-minded perspectives generated by a mechanism of falsehood and hypocrisy and thus overlooking "the other side." Such limited viewpoint is undesirable considering the idiosyncrasy of the period's fictional works that require precise deciphering of the secret codes hidden behind the veils of the rhetoric.