石亭 李定稷의 文學論 考察

A Study on Seok-Jung, Jung Jik Lee’s Literary Theory

This paper examines Seok-Jung, Jung Jik Lee's literary theory. Lee's literary theory is divided first specifically 'Chingongchinsung [盡工盡性]' theory for a writer, that Lee insists that a writer's talent can be developed only after he trains himself and cultivates his capability, second, ‘Beupgochangyeon [法古創見]’ theory for a creation, which emphasizes that a writer can create and bloom newness only by keeping oldness, and lastly ‘Jeulchatarkmah [切磋琢磨]’ theory for learning, that he argues that a writer polishes his ideas and finally trims them up. Seok-Jung argues that a writer's born nature and gift could be maximized only by training and cultivating them constantly. According to Seok-Jung's metaphorical illustration, although there is no a purely white fox in the world, we can make leather clothes of white fox fur when a uncountable number of a white fox furs become available from its armpit. Seok-Jung, in particular, emphasizes on the importance of cultivation and development of a logical correlation in each stage that all conclusions results from an effort to achieve them. In addition, Seok-Jung introduced oldness into his literary theory as a basic principle for a creation. Seok-Jung thinks that it was essential to imitate old things as a means of preserving them, whereas he argues strongly the faults of Kong-arhn school whose basic rules of a creation is to reveal emotions without hesitation under the logic that similitude is not real. On the other hand, he insists that copyism which started with a resonable voice but did not go into the stage of cultivating newness shows a problem in its identity that it came out through the same gate which it entered. Therefore, Seok-Jung concluded that only the study accumulated through oldness could create a new stage. Seok-Jung's logic that both‘training himself and developing his gift’ and ‘regarding oldness and creating newness’ had the correlation in each stage was throughly involved to complete his learning theory in which he insists that a writer polishes his ideas and finally trims them up. That is, Seok-Jung's literary theory is that various concepts like ‘apprentice vs genius,’ ‘copy vs creation,’ ‘oddness vs commonness,’ ‘physical similarity vs mental grasp’ etc, which had consistently been debated in views of contradictory relations before him, are regarded as those which are related to one another and have a correlation with each counterpart, a consistent logic. The characteristics of his literary theory lie in a consistent logic emphasizing the concept of cultivation.