이야기 들려주기의 二重構造 : '배따라기'와 '늙은 뱃사람의 이야기' = The Double-Layer Structure of Story-Telling: 'Baetaragi' and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay is an attempt to probe the thematic relevance of the double­layer structure of story­telling, the narrative frame utilized in Kim Dong­in's 'Baetaragi'('The Seaman's Chant') and Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The theme of a literary work cannot be properly understood unless its narrative frame is taken into full consideration in an analysis of the work. Much too often, we tend to overlook the fact that when an artist is engaged in creating a work, his or her primary concern is to set up a narrative frame most effective in telling the story. Thematic analysis is not possible without structural analysis.
Kim Dong­in's 'Baetaragi' has two layers of story­telling. The outer frame of narration in the work involves the first­person narrator, 'I',who appears before the reader as an inexperienced youth indulging in an optimistic view of life, The story­within­the­story concerns a familial tragedy, as related by the old seaman and summarized in the words of the first­person narrator, the listener. The inner frame of narration, though it contains a story­within­a­story, which evolves independently of the overall structure of the whole work, is nonetheless meant to have an inseparable relevance to the outer frame of narration, for, after, listening to the old seaman's story, the first­person narrator undergoes a certain transform­ation or spiritual regeneration. One might say that the story­within­the­story stands for 'literature', and the first­person narrator, who becomes enlightened after listening to a story which reflects a view of life drastically opposite to his, stands for the 'reader.' In this sense, 'The Seaman's Chant's it a marvelous instance of metafiction.
Coleridge' poem is another work that reflects an author's obsession to reveal in a piece of writing his thoughts on the very act of writing. The Ancient Mariner, the main narrator in the work, plays the role of a teacher, one who has had some experience in life ; therefore, he stands for 'literature'. The Wedding Guest, the victim of the Ancient Mariner's compulsion to tell his story, represents the reader ; and the change he undergoes while and after listening to the story is Coleridge's way of telling us how the experience of reading or listening to a story can affect the reader or listener
Both the first­person narrator in Kim Dong­in's story and the Wedding Guest in Coleridge's poem represent the role of the reader in the realm of the vicarious experience called 'literature.' The two works are manifestations of the authorial endeavor to prove that, after all, the act of writing is none other than trying to tell the readers what the role or function of the reader is in the realm of imaginative literature as well as what the act to writing really amounts to.