고전 소설에 나타나는 역설적 비극과 낭만

The Romantic Plot and Its Ironic-tragic Situation in Korean Classical-novels

In Korean-classical Novels (古典小說), most of the heroes/heroines assume an ironical shape: outwardly, he/she stands for Confucianism, but he/she fights against the problems originated from the Confucian social organization. Because Confucianism was the ruling ideology in Choseon dynasty. Sa-ssi-namgeonggi works as a good example of this kind of duplicity experienced by these writers: the novel’s irony lies in the fact that the heroine Sa-ssi does want to keep the Confucian ideology seriously, but her pain becomes all the greater because she cannot accept it fundamentally. On the readers’ part, however, things are different: the heroine gets the readers’ sympathy, that is, for them the Confucian ideology turns out to be the strong bonds by which women are repressed.