광복기 문학독본과 문학교육(1)

Literary Readers and Literary Education during the Independence Period (1) -Focusing on the topics in modern poems

This study aims at exploring the nature and characteristics of the literary readers during the Independence Period based on the history of the literary circles. The purpose is to shed a light on the relation between literary readers and the middle school Korean textbook system and to explain the realignment of literary canon and the changes in the canon formation. First, fighting against illiteracy was one of the most important tasks in the education policy right after the Independence. The Joseon Language Society took the initiative in the language education at the time. The anti-illiteracy campaign and the national enlightenment campaign, therefore, were led by the Korean Language Culture Dissemination Association, the Korean Language Academy and the Korean Education Research Institute organized by the Joseon Language Society and the Korean linguists from the local society. Against this backdrop, the Joseon Language Society and the Education Management Office of the Military Government took the lead in publishing the Korean textbooks, and various readers for public language education were mass produced and became widespread. Literary readers at the time including the 『Literary Reader』 by Lee Yun-jae and the 『Korean Literary Reader』 by Jeong Yeol-mo went into printing repeatedly in a short period of time. These readers seem to have faithfully played their roles as a temporary textbook or as a supplementary reader for school education and adult education until 『Middle Korean Language Textbook』 was published by the Joseon Language Society and the Education Management Office of the Military Government. This shows that literary readers had a significant influence on students and the public in their learning the Korean language. Second, these literary readers explained the formation procedure and characteristics of the literary canon in the early stage of the Independence Period when the line up of writers was still not reorganized toward the right-wing literary circles. Literary readers of the time mostly showed a balance between left and right-wing writers in the process of the canon formation. Except for the 『Modern Korean Literature Essence』, the line up includes both ideologies, and the fact that many writers and literary works published in the 『Modern Korean Literature Essence』 after the reshuffle of the literary circles were realigned into Korean textbooks explained the ideology and political characteristics of the canon formation during the Independence Period. As realizing the national identity was the first priority of the time, which required Korean education, it seemed that literary and social criteria were not strictly applied when selecting and arranging texts included in literary readers. In other words, rather than forcing the national ideology, the format and contents of readers were decided based on the compiler's personal taste and judgement. It can be concluded, therefore, that the literary canon formation began to have an indispensible relation with ideological requests only after the nation building. Third, as the importance of language education increased, local societies were asked to develop their own textbooks and the 『Middle Korean Reader』 published in Busan was one of the most important local readers. Yu Yeol, who was leading the “Baedal Academhy” realized the need for textbooks for Korean language lessons as there were not enough qualified textbooks except for official bulletins. This reader was very significant in many ways; it utilized the existing canon when forming a canon with writers and literary works; contained the relevance and nationalistic tendency in terms of selecting topics; included many KAPF writers such as Park Tae-won, Lee Ki-younh, Lee Tae-jun, Jo Yeong-chul, Han Seol-ya, Kim Ki-jin, Eom Heung-seop, Park Ah-ji; has a high proportion of novels in addition to the variety in the literary types;