This thesis is a theoretical approach to a method of writing women's literary history. How to write women's literary history has little been an academic issue in not only Korea but also other countries. It seems to be no wonder because an earnest stud...
This thesis is a theoretical approach to a method of writing women's literary history. How to write women's literary history has little been an academic issue in not only Korea but also other countries. It seems to be no wonder because an earnest study of women's literary began in recent years, while some differences among nations. The purpose of this study is to make issues of important questions of writing women's literary history and to grope for a different method of it.
Generally speaking, writing women's literary history in European nations started at the same time with feminist movement in the 1960s, which gave rise to an attention to gender identity. Writing a history is an important useful way of identity recognition, including women's literary history. China and Japan have each a few examples of women's literary history, which were accomplished early in comparison of European nations. In these cases, women's literary history was regarded as just one part of national literary history. Unfortunately, there's no example of what so called writing women's literary history in Korea. However, many kinds of books and essays on Korean women's literature were included in investigation for this study, from academic monographs in recent days to short articles of magazines or newspapers in the early 20th.
To sum up, there have been three important issues of writing women's literary history generally. The first issue is what is recognized as women's literary tradition. One of the typical tendencies is trying to find ‘a great tradition’ in women's literary history with the same measure of valuating existing national literature. Another is trying to explain what so called ‘femininity’ as a characteristic of women's literature. The notion of ‘femininity’ has been referred on the one had negative as negative meaning, on the other as affirmative.
The second issue is how feminist viewpoint is reflected in writing women's literary history. Some early Western examples had a tendency of overestimating women's writing and growing sentimental over women writers in the past, due to consciousness for women's emancipation. On the other hand, examples of China, Japan and Korea had a tendency of just confirming objectively historical facts of women writers or literary works. There is no doubt that feminist standpoint has played an important part of excavating and revaluating women's literary past, in spite of some ill effects.
The third issue is how periods of women's literary history are divided. Examples of China, Japan and Korea followed uncritically the way of each national literary history, criterions of which were a change of dynasties, regime, centuries or literary genres. Western examples in recent days have approached somewhat critically the question of periodization of women's literary history, which reflects some critique on modern knowledge leaded by postmodernism and poststructalism. However, any idea is little found that periodization of women's literary history could be different from that of national literary history.
To solve the problems, this thesis suggested a new direction of writing women's literary history and examined its application to Korean women's classical literary history. The new direction means turning from literary history to history of oral and literary life. The concept of ‘oral and literary life’ is substituted for ‘literature’ which doesn't suit the purpose of explaining women's literary history. It could include not only all kinds of written materials but also oral phenomena related to women's activity, not only professional artistic works but also ordinary writing and speaking, not only creative productive activity but also literary consumption like reading books. Discourse of women is included in it, too.
A history of oral and literary life means a kind of cultural history focusing on language and power relationships among groups such as gender, class, race and etc. Writing history of women's oral and literary life has subjects of elucidating women's oral and literary activity and historical changes of power relationship of gender. It is the most important subject to analyse patriarchal structure of controlling women's oral and literary life and its changes and continuity. As examples, this thesis analysed a biographical record of a Korean women poet written by her son in the early of 19th. and critiques of men writers in the upper class during four centuries, which valuated the most famous Korean women writer died in 1589.
In the final chapter, it is suggested that we need to diversify forms of writing women's literary history. A new point of viewing literary history could be expressed better through diverse forms. It is why new attempts of historiography have been made in many fields of study inside and outside of country. For example, writing a new history of French literature attempted, what so called, a postmodernistic encyclopedic literary history, expressing a new concept of periodization. To represent a history of Korean women's oral and literary history, we need to examine positively diverse forms applying Microhistory and Macrohistory. This thesis examined an application of a conventional chronological method.