문예지 지평선과 신대륙의 문학사적 의미

The Meaning of Literary Magazines, The Horizon and The New Continent in the Literary History

The Horizon and The New Continent are the Korean literary magazines published in the United States from 1970’s to 1980’s. The former is a prominent magazine of the Western area of the US while the latter is the one of the Eastern area. The Horizon is specialized in poetry, and The New Continent is a rather comprehensive magazine that includes novels, essays, fairy tales and literary reviews as well as poems. There is no significant difference of both magazines in terms of contents of poems. Their common themes are desire for identification(favor and hope) with the American society, non-identification or desire for non-identification(isolation and critical mentality). However, The New Continent shows more critical aspects toward the American society, and has more lyrical aspects than The Horizon. Meanwhile, The Horizon expresses a favorable attitude toward American civilization and nature. Generally, poems published in both magazines are lyrics. They are mainly written in Korean, but some of the poems are written in both Korean and English. Using Korean and English words is one of the characteristics of Korean American poetry. The meaning of The Horizon and The New Continent in the literary history are as follows: First, both magazines embrace sentiments such as pain, hope, and homesickness of Korean American immigrants in 1970’s and 1980’s. Second, both has contributed to developing Korean American poetry which was inherited to Korean American Literature, and New York Literature. Third, both expends the history of Korean American poetry as well as the history of Korean poetry. Thoroughly compared and closely analyzed with Korean domestic poetry literature, literary values of both magazines should be objectively evaluated. In addition, studies on both magazines by being compared with Korean literature in other foreign countries can be used to expand the boundary of modern Korean literature. It must be hurried because the number of poets who have lived in foreign countries drastically decreases.