South Korea's Hyundai Homecoming Novel Research

"Go-back","go-back-go" model, is also called "Homecoming" model. As a motif,"Homecoming" model is a continuously theme and plot mode since thousands of years, and is also a motif which often occurs in ancient and modern literature. View from the South Korean modern literature,"Homecoming" is a cultural and social phenomenon, which has significant cultural implications. Many famous South Korean modern writers have involved in this field and created many famous works, such as Xuan Zhenjian’s "Hometown", Cui Shuhai’s "Homeland", Zhao Mingxi’s "Off the East River", Han Xueye’s "Transitional Period ", Li Taijun’s" Hometown", Lee Guangzhu’s" Soil", Li Jiyong’s" Hometown ", Shen Xun’s" Evergreen Tree" and so on. These works are termed South Korea’s modern Homecoming novels in this paper.As we all know, literature is closely related to the social environment, and it is the same with South Korea modern literature. South Korea modern literature started from Korea humiliating period. In this particular historical environment, the history of Korean modern literature appeared a lot of novels with "homecoming" as their theme. These novels’themes and narrative strategies are difficult to get rid of the social reality that Korean was occpied by Japan. In value judgments and cultural choice, writers are trying to express their understanding of the nation and country’s existing situation through their view of the leaving and homecoming intellectuals and peasants. Their creation, whether content, style, or aesthetic implications all have the main features of the homecoming literature. Because of such a significant characteristics, it is pretty necessary to strip the homecoming novels from rural fictions or peasants’fictions and research as an independent area.Through the sufficient investigations of those relevant research achievements, we find that former researchers’researchment is only focused on the refraction relationship between writers and works, or the connection between the theme, historical background and characters. These studies tend to focus on only one aspect, and cannot reflect the overall significance of such novels. Therefore, there are still a large room remains to be further expanded and in-depth in the research of these homecoming novel. Thus, to explore homecoming novels on manifestations, culture and aesthetic implication, will have an important sense on whole literary history. Based on previous studies, this thesis mixes social history, psychology, archetypal criticism science, narratology, reception aesthetics and other research methods together to create a comprehensive research method. By choosing eight typical homecoming novels as an object, researching the content, art forms and cultural connotation, combing the novel development context, to well understand the position of homecoming novel in South Korea’s History of Modern Fiction.The content of this thesis has been made of three parts. First, by using relevant theories of social history, to explore the reason and social background about the reasons why homecoming novels appear, thus to know about the cultural and historic environment that the Korean national survival. Throughout homecoming novels, we can clearly see that the works appeared in the Japanese Invasion of Korea. The appearance of the novels is closely related to the political, economic and cultural policies that Japanese implement in colonial Korea. The colonial plunder Japan to South Korea first is economic, because the essence of aggressive is plunder. Since the establishment of the Governor Korea, the land investigation order, the proliferation of programs and production meters and the irrigation and water conservancy construction, crazily plundered Korea’s land resources. Nearly75%of the farmers were forced to lose their land and became tenants or semi-tenants. So their lives in the hometown became difficult and they had no choice but to go to China or Japan to make a living. In the political and cultural area, Japan initially practiced the Forced politics (1910s) in Korea, then to the Cultural Politics (1920s), and then turned to extreme pressure politics (1930s). Japanese always suppressed the domestic nationalist movement and socialist movement. Such a social environment forced some national independence movement and the anti-Japanese movement shifted to China. In this new historical form,the intellectuals desired to know new things and use a new cultural system to resolve Korea’s current problems they have to face. So they left home to the city or went to Japan. In this period, Korean, whether voluntary or passive, many of them left their home.Generally speaking, leaving home must be accompanied with homecoming, which is a human instinct phenomenon. The intellectuals and writers, who experienced this period, began to use the "leave home-homecoming" phenomenon to reveal the numerous crimes that Japanese committed in South Korea. For this reason, homecoming novels have gradually transformed into a carrier that reflect Korean political, social realities and individual consciousness and occupy an important position in the history of modern fiction in Korea.Second, using social history and psychology to research the content of homecoming novels. This part of research mainly focuses on the ideology of homecoming novels and collective unconscious tendency. The homecoming novels tend to be divided into enlightenment ideology, nationalism, and class struggle. The Enlightenment homecoming novels are involved in the inflowing of enlightenment idea and the Rural Enlightenment that Japanese practiced in Korea. The nationalism homecoming novels are involved in Japanese aggressions that make Korean nationalist ideas about initiation. The taking class struggle homecoming novel is involved in Japanese aggression and the communist movement in Korea dissemination. The homecoming novels made an actively response to the change of political and social reality, and it produced a class struggle ideology, which reflect the poor farmers in rural areas as well as the decline of the growing pro-Japanese because of Japanese invasion. Further illustrated that only through class struggle national liberation and national independence can be achieved. On the other hand, the collective unconscious that the homecoming novels reflect will be studied from the following two aspects. First one is the strong emotion of the lands. It is concerned with the Japanese invaders who plundered land. The love of land is due to Korean’s farming life rooted in the land. The most important thing of farming is land, but colonized Korean farmers lost their land, which undoubtedly stimulate their love of land. Second one is the returning consciousness that these homecoming novels show. Returning consciousness is mainly related to the Japanese Invasion of Korea. Because of Japanese aggression, the farmers lost their land and were forced to leave home to other countries, and the patriots had to transfer to overseas to carry on their anti-Japanese movement. Years of outside vagrant life stimulated their biological instinct which is called returning consciousness, and encouraged them to go home. These two motifs reflect a nation’s generation universal life experiences and psychological experience accumulated. It is a projection of history and culture in the nation’s collective memory. Good writers present its meaning mind through personalized feel.Third, by using the theory of narrative, prototype criticism and reception aesthetics to do research on narrative point of view, narrative sequence, narrative space, the implied author and implied reader of homecoming fiction. Narrative Perspective selection strategy reflects the writer’s position and the consciousness to express. The same event viewed from different angles may show a different face and different people will have different meanings. The choices of narrative perspective on homecoming novels are first-person observer perspective, third-person omniscient perspective writer, and third-person observer perspective. The narrative sequence is the narrative time that the author made according to the needs of the novel’s expression. It not only expresses the writer’s writing skills, but also presents the author’s hidden attitude in the works. The design of narrative time on homecoming novels mostly is positive Syria, flashback and flat Syria with a diversity of performance features. The design of space on homecoming novels changes a lot. Compared to the ancient novel concerned, the change gives it more meaning. The narrative space of the novels changed from "hometownâ†'Manchuria, hometownâ†'Japan, and hometownâ†'city "to" Manchuriaâ†'hometown, Japanâ†'hometown, and cityâ†'hometown". These changes in narrative space exhibit a common tendency of the main narrative, and then the narrative space is not just external, objective existence. They are bound with the works’theme. When space is reorganized, the implicit meaning re-emerges. Implied author and reader are valuable means of literary analysis. Implied author soaks in objective work itself, and it truly presents the author’s intention of writing and cultural context. In general, the implied author is idealized actual author, but he is not entirely consistent with the actual author, sometimes even diametrically contrary. Therefore, the relationship of the implied author and the actual author is bidirectional and interactive. This complex relationship is also found in homecoming novels. Most of the implied author’s experience is the same with the real author. It is the real author’s personal experience and values of sublimation, and it more truly reflects the social status. Of course, the novels’implied author and the real author have completely different character also exists. In addition, in homecoming novels, the implied readers that the authors expected are intellectuals. They hope that the implied readers have the same core values with them and the novels can arouse their sympathy.Above all, by using the research methods of social history, psychology, science archetypal criticism, narratology, reception aesthetics and other research methods, this thesis does systematic study on eight typical homecoming novels about their content, style, and meaning. The research of this thesis expands the scope of the study on Korean homecoming novels and makes the homecoming novels a great role in Korea literary history.