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Традиционные мотивы в современной литературе РК (на примере романа Чхон Мёнгвана "Кит")
Traditional motives in contemporary South Korean literature (referencing Cheon Myun-Gwan's novel "Whale")
This article analyzes Cheon Myun-Gwan's novel "Whale", named by critics as "unusual" for its originality, frequent time shifts, and odd - if not fantastic - characters. Reality quietly morphs into fantasy, romantic stories absorb naturalistic scenes, lines of poetry augment descriptions of tragic events. The author himself is present in this fictional universe. Rarely does Korean fiction admit author's digression, yet in "Whale", the author addresses the reader and offers his own opinion on characters' actions and background events making reference to related historical episodes.
This article explores traditional motives related to folk beliefs, shamanism, Confucianism, and one of the forms of the Tao teachings. The unusual characters resembling those from the Korean medieval novellas paeseol can, too, be called traditional. Special attention is given to the main idea going through the entire novel — the life and death opposition — which has concerned philosophers and ordinary people alike since ancient times. The author repeatedly mentions the laws of the universe (the laws of love, flesh, heredity, crime, etc.) that govern the lives of the novel characters, and those laws are distant from the Confucian laws, which in turn regulate relationships between people in traditional Korean society.