趙明熙小說論 = On Myong Hui Cho's Novels

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Myong Hui Cho is a novelist who worked in Korea but defected to Russia in 1928 in order to avoid the suppression of the imperialist Japanese. In this article, I intend to elucidate the essential characteristics of his work, especially with regard to those pieces which he published in Korea. I analyzed Into the Ground, The Peasants, The Nakdong River. As a result of my own investigation, I discovered the following characteristics.
First of all, Cho's novels are set in the 1920's, the time which might be described as a period of national poverty. The urban setting in his novels is Seoul and the rural background is his native place, Chungbuk Province, and the area around the Nakdong River.
Second, he turns poor peasants or intellectuals into heros. They become resistant in the midst of their conflict with the evironments.
Third, the central conflict in the novels arises between the good (the hero) and the evil(the Japanese or the rich). The hero is either disillusioned or dead in the end. However, a certain death predicts a new revival. The plots employed in the novels are concerned with disillusionment, tragedy and education.
Fourth, Cho's novels, founded upon socialist ideals, encourage resistance against the Japanese or the wealthy.
Finally, he employs various literary devices to manifest those socialistic themes.
(i) By using a title associated with the 'land', he shows his love for the motherland
(ii) He leads the story in the first·person or the omniscent narrator's point of view. The former is used to describe the world which the author has experienced for himself, whereas the latter is used to depict the indirectly experienced world or the ideological world.
(iii) He uses a poetic or prosaic style. This expresses his romanist and socialist ideas.
a. Relying on denotative diction, he employs the words 'pain' and 'movement' most frequently. These words bear directly on the theme.
b. He employs figurative image.
c. The sentences are structurally complex and convoluted
d. The tone which his style evokes is fierce but sadly magnificent.
To summarize the above characterstics, the work of Myong Hui Cho is the literature which expresses, in a unique poetic and prosaic style, aspects of the pain and resistance of the Korean people during the colonial period. Accordingly, the significance of Cho's work in the Korean literary history could be summarized as the following. First, his novels are the literature of realism bearing witness to the harship of the Korean people. Second, they manifest resistance against the Japanese and the wealthy. And they successfully create an image of the patriotic fighter. Finally, they find themselve in a high level of literature by harmonizing ideology and art. In this regard, the previous proletarian prejudices against his novels need to be reconsidered.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ.序論
• Ⅱ.本論
• 1.「땅 속으로」
• 2.「農村 사람들」
• 3.「洛東江」
• Ⅲ.結論