喜劇的 敍事民謠 硏究 = A Study of the Korean Comic Folk Ballad

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In my book, Sosaminyo Yo`nku (A Study of the Korean Folk Ballad), I presented 14 types and 170 versions of Korean folk ballads collected in Kyongsang-pukto province by me, and analysed them in the generic conception, structure, style and tradition. The general temper of these ballads is tragic. Their main themes are women's inner conflicts under the burden of the feudal society ruled by men. However, after publishing this book, I found another kind of folk ballad, which is not tragic but comic. These comic folk ballads are not much. Only 5 types and 6 versions are found. But I think they are quite important materials to study the nature of Korean folk ballad.
The typological structure of the comic ballads is same with that of tragic ones. Both of them are consisted of four main emic constituent parts or motifems, using Alan Dundes' term: "Misfortune" (M), "Attempted Escape" (AE), "Failure" (F), and "Happiness Obtained" (HO). The typical sequence of these motifemes is as follows, to explain it with an exemplle, a type "A Widow and Her Son."
M: A widow said she could not sleep because her room was too cold.
AE: Her good son heated her room.
F: But she said her room was cold as before.
AE: Her good son invited a poor travelling merchant to sleep in his mother's room with her.
F: The poor travelling merchant went away, and she was unhappy as before.
HO: Her good son made the poor travelling merchant his mother's husband.
In this sequence, two moral cannons of feudal Korea are destroyed. One is that a good son must make please his mother with comfortable foods, clothes, and housing. But however he may good, he cannot make her please. The other is that a widow must not marry once more. But the sexual solitude of the widow cannot be solved in other way. The destruction of these moral cannons are depicted in comic structure and humorous style. The motifemes are same with those of the tragic folk ballad, while their actural meanings and effects are quite different. So the tragic one and the comic one form a genre that is the folk ballad, and each of them is an independent sub-genre.