박인환 시의 장소와 심상지리

A Study on the Place and Imaginative Geography in Park In-whan’s Poems

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the spatial characteristics and the imaginative geography in Park In-Whan’s poems. Park pursued the liberation of the East Asian nations by creating the sense of solidarity between them. The place of solidarity for him, however, is rather a imaginative space than a specific place. In his poems, Park represented his hometown which had been destroyed during the Korean War. His poems not only represented his unique sense of locality, caused by the destruction of his hometown, but also his attempt to reconstruct it as an imaginative geography. Park traveled to America in 1955. This visit also changed the imaginative geography in his poems. His description of the American cities indicated the deconstruction of the imagined topography and the embodiment of America. Park’s poems and travel records of America are the most important materials to understand the characteristics of the imaginative geography in his literary world. He changed the focus of the imaginative geography from the abstract West to the figurative America.