기후문학으로 본 문명 비판과 기후위기의 접점 연구 -이형기 『죽지 않는 도시』를 중심으로- = A Study on the Intersection of Civilizational Critique and Climate Crisis in Climate Literature - Focusing on Lee Hyung-ki’s The City That Does Not Die -

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study focuses on Lee Hyung-ki’s mid-career poetry collection The City That Does Not Die and explores the point at which civilizational critique and the climate crisis converge from the perspective of climate literature. Unlike previous research that has mainly interpreted this collection within the frameworks of civilizational critique or nihilism, this study attempts a new approach grounded in the discourse of climate literature, analyzing the poet’s awareness of the climate crisis and his ecological sensitivity.
The findings are as follows: First, Lee Hyung-ki’s poetry sharply captures the phenomenon in which the perception of seasons is lost and ecological sensibilities become dulled due to climate change, demonstrating a keen ecological awareness. Second, it vividly represents the signs of structural climate crises in ecosystems, such as biodiversity collapse and disruptions of life cycles, through poetic imagery, occasionally revealing a dystopian imagination. Third, even after the catastrophic consequences of climate change, the poetry envisions traces of nature and the possibility of recovery through the poet’s prophetic imagination, thereby presenting a vision that transcends the dystopian worldview. These characteristics can be understood as emerging at the intersection of civilizational critique and climate literature. Through these, the study reveals the ethical and ecological issues that exist between civilization and nature, humans and non-human beings, while providing a new perspective for reflection on their interrelationships. Consequently, this research demonstrates that Lee Hyung-ki’s poetry, written in the 1990s, can be fully reinterpreted through the lens of contemporary climate literature. Furthermore, it suggests the potential for the ecological discourse in Korean literature to expand within today’s literary context.