英文摘要 |
In the early 20th century, when old customs and institutions were considered to be ‘abolished’, marriage and sex were topics of the fiercest controversy, with free love being the central issue. The Koran novel “Mujeong” by Yi Kwang-su, published in 1917 in the newspaper Maeil Shino, was the first full-length modern romantic novel dealing with the theme of free love. Yi Kwang-su was the most ardent writer supporting the revolution of the custom and institution regarding free love and marriage in Chosun, the Korea, in the 1910s. On the other hand, Xie Chun-mu's “Where is She Going?” released in a magazine called Taiwan in 1922, is the first Taiwanese novel tackling free love issue.Both “Mujeong” and “Where is She Going?” describe complexities of free love between male intellectuals and traditional young women in respectively countries in 1910-20s. Both writers wrote in societies in colonized periods, taking free love as an initiation to enlightenment against feudal institutions and culture. This article compares the depictions of romance in “Mujeong” and “Where is She Going?” to elucidate both writers' viewpoints regarding free love. I believe such a comparative study is meaningful; it contributes to our understanding of how the free love discourse came into being in modern Korea and Taiwan. |