서간의 형식과 고백의 형식 - 1910년대 고백담론과 관련하여

Letter Form and Confession Form - on the Confession Discourse in 1910's

A letter has a long history and is writing privately. As we see in the letters of the Chosun Dynasty, the letter before modern times was not beyond the private sphere. However the letter has showed a little different aspects since the modern times when the postal service was introduced and the intelligentsia began to use it. In other words, the letter has extended its sphere towards the concept including the public discourse related to 'modern' and 'nation' beyond the private one. For example, some intellectuals together discuss the content of a letter and become co-senders of it. Like this, the mail has strengthened its public function. In addition, the letter has more enhanced its function towards the public discourse by being published on the public journals such as Tognip-shinmoon, Hyupsunghwoi Hwoibo, or Maeil-shinmoon and so on. In the course of it, as the letter in the form of reader's contribution lively appears, the letter becomes a new form of writing which contains one's insistence or opinion. In 1900's, as the number of students studying abroad increases and Chosun Dynasty becomes a member of Universal Postal Union, the letter takes an opportunity to be usual. People can write a letter to their families or relatives and thus the letter becomes internalized into a new method of writing. The letters published on the learned journals of the time shows these characteristics of the letter. It makes to imagine 'modern', 'nation', and 'people' by the particular way of assuming the supposed receiver and expanding it to whole people or the students studying abroad. This situation continued in 1910's, when a letter appeared to be prominent as a form of writing chosen naturally in art or in travel as well as in daily life. The letter of the time shows the mixture between the dispair or agony of an individual and the concept of a nation or people. Thus the individual's despair or agony embraces the problems of individual and public, women and children, and modern and nation by expanding infinitely its imagination in time and space. So the letter forms an imagined specific community. This mixture is, also, an essential characteristic of modern Korean confessional discourse. A letter, the newly discovered form of writing, is included in a novel. In other words, a letter included in a novel strengthens the function of narrative and forms the genre, an epistolary novel. The letter's orienting towards public discourse is maintained in a novel. For examples, Lee kwang-soo understands his love and his duty on the people and nation in the same place. Yang Gun-Sik expresses the severe conflicts of generation via letters in a novel. These characteristics are in accordance with the course of the formation of the modern intellectual's self. It is confirmed that these have some relationships with the genre, epistolary novel formed in 1920s.