21세기 문학의 길에 관한 소고 = A Study on the Direction of the Literature in the 21c

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

There have been voices about crisis of literature for a long time. The modem society, which is flooded with multimedia, tastes a variety of multicultural experiences rather than the sole experience of literature. New kinds of culture including cinema, game and popular music came to play important roles in the arena of emotion which only literature had played the dominant role once. However, most writers did not show any serious interest about these new cultural phenomena although they complained about these new phenomena. They did not do any thing toward the new phenomena. Some writers nevertheless tried to adjust themselves to the new trends to survive. They produced poem disks, mystery, essay novel, cinema novel, etc. In this meaning, the crisis of literature means a kind of internal crisis in literature itself. Literature as a traditional genre in culture is shattered into pieces. It will be useless to hold on the shattering traditional concept of literature. Literature is producing new kinds of culture relentlessly beyond the traditional concept. In this term, the point is not how to coin new concept of literature or set the guideline for literature, but how to categorize literature in a new concept. It is required to accept the newly created various from of literature instead of dividing literature in to two categories of high and popular literature. It may be true that poetry only will be called as literature in terms of traditional concept in the future. Poetry is closer to the apex of art, in which beauty only is appreciated, than novel, which was created to serve popular taste and developed that way.