Children's literature of which main readers are children reflects children's life. Children contact with a new world through literature that reflecting a variety of life styles and they learn the meaning of life through literature as well. Because of ...
Children's literature of which main readers are children reflects children's life. Children contact with a new world through literature that reflecting a variety of life styles and they learn the meaning of life through literature as well. Because of this, children's literature cannot exist in separation from children's actual life. The purpose of this study was to examine the space, Hwang Seon-mi used to realize themes in her fairy tales, and then present the connectivity between spatial meanings and themes. In addition, the investigator looked into the change and function of the space according to the realization of themes.
A writer's spatial recognition seems to be his or her recognition of reality. Hwang Seon-mi establishes schools and homes which are closely connected with children's life as main spaces, and then deals with children's conflicts and psychology in the spaces. Hwang Seon-mi wrote many fairy tales which were remarkable with spaces. The characteristics of these fairy tales seem to be the space appeared in titles. She begins to talk with the description of a space. As fairy tales of which space appears in titles, there are A Hen Coming out of Yard, The Blue-eyed in the Truck, Saemmaeul Mongdangggaebi, Seize the Orchard, Naon's Secret Room, Aengcho's Yellow House and A Room Possessed. The spaces appeared in above fairy tales are character's main stages of activity and play the role of integral components in developing stories.
The space recognized by Hwang Seon-mi is an extremely unstable space of lack. A house is no more peaceful, warm and protective from external elements. A school loses its function and transforms to a place that suppresses, regulates, monitors and supervises. Most of Hwang Seon-mi's fairy tales describe these kinds of spaces in reality. The space recognized by Hwang Seon-mi is a space of discord unanimously. In order to escape from this space of discord or to harmonize with it, leading characters endlessly attempt communication. They try to communicate not in the actual space of schools or homes but in the space of memory or imagination. However, children who are in the growth stage cannot escape from reality.
On this account, Hwang Seon-mi presents a nature-friendly space as an ideal space. A nature-friendly space is the space not destructed by industrialization and urbanization. By presenting this ideal space, she wants the discordant space of schools or homes to go toward a nature-friendly space. An ideal space refers to the original meaning of the space of 'home' and means recovery to the space in which firm protection from external elements exists and the destruction of family never occurs.
This space is closely connected with themes. The writer's such themes as 'the realization of dream and hope', 'criticizing reality', 'understanding others and the world', 'the conflict and reconciliation of family' and 'the recognition of values of living together in cooperation' are presented with the conflicts in schools and homes. The embodiment process of themes in fairy tales is also the process of occurring and settling down conflicts. It is because fairy tales are a literary form of which center is action and deal with the growth of children via internal and external conflicts.
Hwang Seon-mi endlessly dreams a dream of the world in which human beings living with the nature, and materializes a tight tug-of-war between them with her recognition of reality. To the children living in such an environment that is extremely materialized and urbanized, she tries to instill unadulterated breath of nature. On this account, the ideal space described by Hwang Seon-mi is a friendly space. Man lives in the nature and the life of man is expressed in literary works. Literature cannot be separated from the nature. When the life of human beings is nature-friendly, it can be stable and firmly take root.
The space in Hwang Seon-mi's fairy tales plays an important role in presenting themes and her recognitions as a writer. When a space is more remarkable, the plot or composition of story is solider and the connectivity with themes is closer. Sometimes, the space itself is closely linked with the substantial meaning of fairy tales as a mechanism of reflecting characters' consciousness. On the contrary, when a space is not concrete and not detailed, thus not being established as a character's main stage of activity, the distance between a theme and a space is far that much.