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The Past and Present of Women’s Literature

Korea Journal / Korea Journal, (P)0023-3900; (E)2733-9343
2007, v.47 no.1, pp.79-101
https://doi.org/10.25024/kj.2007.47.1.79

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Abstract

This essay aims to consider the limitations and possibilities of womens literature. Although womens literature played an enormous role in the renaissance of Korean literature, it was ghettoized into a literature of the biological woman. Especially Sin Gyeong-suk and her admirers confine women in the gendered space of the kitchen and thus keep womens literature relegated to a subgenre of literature. We cannot ignore the fact that womens literature of the 1990s, incriticizing the male-dominated literature of the time, asked questions about literature itself. Nevertheless, its power to provoke has been remarkably weakened by a market logic that commercializes the works of female writers and by the attempt of male critics to replace subversive womens literature with the image of home and maternity. However, new paths in womens literature are being exploredthrough the recent works of Cheon Un-yeong, Hwang Byeong-seung, and Kang Yeong-suk. They reposition women and femininity to the point where conventional lines between masculine and feminine blur while deepening and enlarging the scope of Korean literature. Cheon reveals a reversive gender consciousness through phallic women and feminine men; Hwang summons innumerable in-betweens ranging from man to woman by showing the performative and subcultural gender identities that constitute male and female; and Kang suggests a conceivable aesthetic of femininity by thinking of lives of women on the boundaries, especially in terms of the female body and sexuality.

keywords
womens literature, femininity, gender, plural genders, gender ideology, dichotomy, womens body, phallic women, border-line, border crossing, politics of identity, aesthetics of femininity, womens literature, femininity, gender, plural genders, gender ideology, dichotomy, womens body, phallic women, border-line, border crossing, politics of identity, aesthetics of femininity

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