김환태의 日本 九州大學 학위 논문에 나타난 매슈 아놀드의 비평 연구

A Study on the Critical theory of Matthew Arnold in the Kim Hwan-Tae’s graduation thesis of Ku Ju Imperial University

The literary critic Kim Hwan Tae majored in English Literature at the KuJu Imperial University. It was there that he began to formilate his views on literature and literary criticism. His well known graduation thesis, “Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater as Literary Critics” levels unsolved the ambiguity of why he chose such a topic for research. However, it is a wellknown fact that the Japanese literary world of the nineteen thirties was influenced greatly by western literary movements, and it is clear that his literary and critical theory was formulated as a direct result of his research of Arnold and Pater. Kim Hwan Tae emphasized the following three point: First, ‘The Critical power is of lower rank than the creative. second, He integrated Arnond’s concept of disinterestedness as the origin of criticism and used this position to oppose proletarian literature. Third, He asserted that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life, -to the question: How to live.’