신화의 해석과 전유 가르치기

Teaching the Interpretation and Appropriation of a Myth: Focusing on English Poetry Course

This paper aims to provide a series of poems and paintings that shares the same myth as their motif or theme. They are selected to demonstrate to the students that myths have an almost endless capacity for interpretation, reinterpretation, adaption, and appropriation. Korean students, who are in lack of cultural literacy with regard to Greek mythology compared to those in the western hemisphere, tend to have difficulties in understanding the signification of the myths alluded in poems. Teaching mythology and poetry at once is a big challenge to tackle. An explanation of the meaning of a myth in a particular poem is likely to lead to a mistaken belief that the mythical figure has a unitary meaning. This study focuses on the myths of Icarus and the birth of Venus. The reason for their selection is threefold: first they are well known to the students, second they have a relatively simple narrative structure and lastly they are adapted in many poems and paintings from the classical age through renaissance to the present age. The differences of each author’s vision and thematic concern become manifest through a detailed analysis of the context of a mythic narrative, the language used in the poems and the composition of the paintings. A comparative study shows that myth is almost endlessly reinterpreted and appropriated. It also highlights the distinctive features and subtleties of each work.