There is no doubt that Lee, Kwang-soo is a memorial author in history of Korean literature. His early shot stories are significant that they have some features of modern novels besides they are recognized as start line of Lee`s literary achievement. H...
There is no doubt that Lee, Kwang-soo is a memorial author in history of Korean literature. His early shot stories are significant that they have some features of modern novels besides they are recognized as start line of Lee`s literary achievement. However, the literati who has studied Lee`s novels has been depreciating his works and analyzing them with relating non-literary aspects, which is definitely inappropriate to study literary material. This essay will be tracing the process which the motives of Lee`s early shot stories is embodying the themes to evaluate objectively the significance of the shot stories. The concept of the motif which is selected as a method of this analysis is based on the motif theory of B. Tomashevsky. The motif of Lee`s early shot stories is divided into 3 groups. The first motive is `Marriage`. Lee, Kwang Soo kept talking about marriage in his stories written in 1910`s. The stories about marriage are `Cold-Heartedness(無情)`, `A boy`s tear (소년의 비애)` and `To my little friend(어린 벗에게)` and so on. These shout stories express how badly the antinomy of marriage out of date affect whole society. In addition, there are various characters in these stories to describe that the problems of marriage are occurring to all kind of stratums in society. They are evaluated that the quality is a little lower than his other works because there is something out of the themes which should be focused on marriage discovered. The second motif is `Sacrifice`. These works were written before Korea became a colony of Japan , and one can feel Lee`s patriotism through `A young a sacrifice (어린희생)`, `Dedicator(헌신자)`. Lee is emphasizing antagonism against Japan and education for independent development of Korea. However, these stories have some defects which the author is equating patriotism and philanthropy and making readers confused by emphasizing parts which have nothing to do with `Sacrifice`.The last motif is `Solitude`. This demonstrates Lee`s internal conflict after Korea belonged to Japan; `Kim Kyung(김경)``, `Wandering(방황)` and `Yoon, Kwang Ho(윤광호)`. The characters of these stories are straying people, and they point the importance of individualism through showing conflict between nationalism and individualism. In other words, people have to overcome loneliness first. Lee, Kwang-soo`s early works are very meaningful from a point of literary veiw because they were written with very close relation with the state of the day and make perceive the thoughts of the intellect. Moreover, there are some modern aspects discovered in Lee`s early works.