The Tale Of Chunhyang:From Literature To Film

As one of the representative works of pansori novels,“The Tale of Chunhyang” plays an important role in the Korean literary history,which is named to be the Korean classical literature of the "big three" together with "The Tale of Shimcheong" and "The Tale of Heungbu";as well as is said to be the “three of Asia's great classical novels” with "a dream of Red Mansion" and "the tale of Genji".Its story comes from the folk legends at the beginning,later the folklore was put into singing by the artists “kwangdae” with the art form of pansori,then some wise pansori artist like Shin-Jaehyo wrote the contents down,and finally the booksellers processed and polished it into novel.For hundreds of years,with the transmission of art form pansori from generation to generation as well as the readers' changing and expanding in the middle and late of Joseon Dynasty,the content of “The Tale of Chunhyang” also has been repeatedly rewritten,by which there has been 143 different editions besides Chinese edition,Korean edition,manuscripts and mill block printed edition to be found.The hero of the novel " Chunhyang " has become the representative of the image of the Korean women.Since the 1930 s,the civilian literature classic has become the object of researching;the "Chunhyang" research has been carried out vigorously.After 20 th century,with the openness of the narrative content,it has been adapted into a variety of art forms like novel,poem,cartoon,drama,theater,movie,TV show,radio drama,dance,with the glory of the original classic art.However,in the face of the "Literature Crisis Theory" of consumer era which was proposed by Deconstructionism critic J.Hillis Miller,whether the development of literature,especially the classical literature can keep up with the pace of the times is worth of thinking by everyone.Known as the world's "seventh art",since the day of his birth,literary text is destined to be the main source of its screenwriting,especially those outstanding and well-known classic works of literature.To satisfy the popular in the way of form is unexpected by all the literature writers.Therefore,the film adaptations can be regarded as an effective means of continuation to the literary works.Throughout the Korean film history,the novel edition “The Tale of Chunhyang " had been adapted into movies for twenty-four times successively,it seems that Chunhyang film also also witnessed the rise and fall of the Korean Peninsula film industry.Whenever the film industry has undergone major technological changes,or has fallen into a trough and needs to rise again,“The Tale of Chunhyang” almost fell into all filmmakers' mind at the first moment.It can be said that “The Tale of Chunhyang " silently opens up every new historical epoch in the Korean Peninsula's movie industry and even the history of film.This thesis holds film adaptation theory as the guide,with the theories of linguistics,Semiology,narratology,reception aesthetics discipline as the supplementary theory,adopts the method of combining internal and external research,theoretical explanation and case analysis,art ontology and cultural studies,try to make a whole picture of the Korean Peninsula film history of “The Tale of Chunhyang” adaption through a multi-level and multi dimension stereoscopic view.The purpose of this thesis is to explore the image of Chunhyang in all ages produced by the movies adapted from Chunhyang novels,and the future trend of the adaption,especially the enlightenment brought by the modern interpretation of the classic literature text,value and significance.This study consists of the following parts:In the introduction,the origin,purpose and significance of the research was expounded firstly.The scope of this study was determined after analyzing the film adaptation of the history.The first chapter is the theoretical basis of the research.This chapter summarizes the problems of text theory,definition,method and concept of adaptation,defines the terminology of "adaptation strategy","adaptation method" and "adaptation technique",and finally defines "adaptation" as follows: Adaptation is the third creation of the creative subject,who decodes the original text and recodes the new text by Audio-visual symbols under the law of film's creation.The second chapter focused on the novel “The Tale of Chunhyang”.This chapter takes the internal and external causes of literary works,influences and accepts them as horizontal clues,and takes the evolution of folklore to discus novels as the longitudinal clue to carry on the internal research of the novel “The Tale of Chunhyang”.At the same time,involving the Korean dynasty identity system,prostitutes system,slavery system,censor system and other social system as the starting point to the external research of novel “The Tale of Chunhyang”.This chapter tries to break down the methodology of interpreting literary works by using the method of sociological analysis in the study of “The Tale of Chunhyang” in the past,correcting some erroneous research tendencies,and collating and translating the research achievements of Korean academics,and providing a useful reference for the study of “The Tale of Chunhyang” in China.From chapter three to chapter six respectively present the Chunhyang film adaptation in accordance with the former movie period,the silent period,acoustic,Renaissance period,development period and the era of consumption in the Korean Peninsula.The research mainly focuses “the spring of peninsula” in 1941,“Cheng Chunxiang” in 1961,“The Tale of Chunhyang” in 2000,“Servant” in 2010 which the video could be found.Among them,in the fifth chapter the three Chunhyang film adaptation of Korean film in the history are discussed,focus on 1980 “The Tale of Chunhyang” and 1984 “love,love,my love” above.This chapter tries to breakthrough the limitations in the past Chunhyang film adaptation studies that confined to the history of Korean film history,but to completer its study from the broad perspective of the whole Korean Peninsula.In 1922,Kim Xiaolang faction in the form of a chain of drama opened the spring of the film.In 1923,Hayakawa Kosyu's work “Chunhyang” was the earliest film made by folk capital which is also considered to be the first silent film on the Korean Peninsula.In 1935,Lee-myoung woo's work “Chunhyang” declared the birth of the first sound film in Korean peninsula.Through the study of photography,recording technology from the Japanese,Lee brothers used private capital to complete this film,which is of great significance to the Korean Peninsula film industry that rises up by relying on foreign capital.“The spring of peninsula”(1941)the "film" of the nested structure,revealed the situation and internal narrative combination for the audience on the worker's helplessness and the dilemma of Peninsula film industry under Japanese colonial rule.To euphemistically avoid the colonial authorities,this film chose the theme of popular drama as the subject which won the film a very high degree around the nation.“Cheng Chunxiang”(1961)in the form of comedy adapted “The Tale of Chunhyang” through diversification,this film promoted the transformation of cinemascope,accelerated the construction of the 1960 s Korean film industry structure and aesthetic characteristics.Choi-eun hee,the heroin successfully transferred the image of women who bears bitterness and loses husband into the film,arousing the contemporary collective resonance of female audience.Yoon-young kyu's “Chunhyang”(1980)is the second film in the history of Korean film adaptation works in which the heroin was shaped as a woman of socialist working class.From the whole,the film is strictly following the “film art” guiding ideology of serious works of art,with a clear sense of artificial work.Shin-sang ok's “love,love,my love”(1984)is the third Korean film in the history of Korean film,which took the musical film to show the totally different form of previous “Chunxiang film”.Im-kwon tek's “Chunhyang”(2000)“faithfully” reproduced the original novel,through the "film" of the nested structure,the essence of the traditional art of the Korean national tradition is enshrined into the film,and an unprecedented great experiment is carried out to reconstruct the aesthetic system of Korean film.“Servant”(2010)was a distinctive postmodern features for the audience interpretation of a modern dress under the modern thinking.In the film,the desire and the pursuit of the goal of modern women formed an effective interaction.It can be said that this film is the most successful one in the past,and provides a reference paradigm for the future “Chunhyang film” adaptation.Finally,the conclusion summarized the research content.The limitation of this research is using the “intertextuality” theory as the starting point,constructs a link between the novel text and the film text,the parody theory has not been used to study the deep relationship between the two texts;The meanings of related terms had not be tested in the practice;As the basic starting point,“audio-visual language” was only put into study in the form of “Chunhyang films” which had a image data,the other forms are of great significance to be studied too.The research on the concept of adaptation is seriously behind the pace of adaptation practice,and the theoretical level still can not form an effective operation paradigm for analyzing the adaptation of the film works.Audio-visual media in the future will certainly occupy the status of the mainstream media for a long time,consequently,the TV series,radio dramas of “The Tale of Chunhyang” adapted works are also worthy of following study by the researchers.