- Overview
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This is a new collection of critical reviews by Gu Mo-ryong who has expanded the cultural and literary horizon through his multi-layered epistemology of a provincial-regional-global framework with a number of books.
- Book Intro
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The critic, Gu Moryong, has explored a much more realistic and concrete literary orientation in his diverse theses and criticism. In his new book, he presents a viewpoint that will help readers understand twenty-first century Korean and regional literature.
The author states, “Literature and literary criticism are but a sacrificial prey on the altar of capital, and not going along with it as entertainment but relying on the fragility of its earnestness and enduring the times of its ruination has been my lot for a long time...” Although that is the condition of literature and literary criticism of the present era, he does not in any possible way, talk about resigning or giving into the dominant trend. In fact, he emphasizes that it was the time of its ruins that helped him nurture and strengthen the value of literature, thereby foretelling the possibility of resurrecting hopeful literature and criticism.
Gu Moryong has pondered about the role of a literary critic who resides not in the central but a regional part of the country. While he has experienced the authoritarianism of centralism and the potential of the provincial towns in the midst of the social change taking place in 1980s, he took a stance that the regional issues can only be ancillary before the crucial tasks in Korean society as a whole. But with the dissolution of the Cold War politics and the advent of the capitalist era on a global scale, he had to reconsider his position.
The regional area became the periphery and its literature displayed the phenomenon of imitating the central trends, “like the dissolution of the Colonial modernist who sought the Western image about to sink and could only return to the traditional way.” The author who is quite wary of this manifestation, states, “It is similar to being forgetful of one’s origin and accepting the misguided direction of going along with the centralism.”
But at the same time, he argues that the regional literature has been alienated from the central in terms of the capital and the system, yet, this cannot be defining factor of it. Because that is what shapes its identity, then the regional literature will put the blame for its backward state on the external factors. The author shows his effort not to be entrapped by this dichotomy and strives to form a new perspective from a regional stance or periphery.
The regional literature has succeeded in not being ensnared by the conflicting dichotomies of modern versus tradition, central versus periphery, modernity versus coloniality, West versus East, and civilization versus nature. Instead, it has set its premise as the realm of productivity and hope. The direction of regional literary criticism that the author aspires for does not appear too remote from it.
- About the Author
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Gu Moryong
Gu Moryong was born in Milyang in 1959. He majored in literary criticism in college and did graduate work in it. He made his debut as a literary critic when his writing, “Moral Entireism-Kim Soo-young’s Literary World,” won him the Chosun Daily New Writer’s Prize in 1982. He wrote for the mook, “Horizon,” the critical quarterly Literary Criticism of the Day, and the poetry quarterly, Newborn. Gu Mo-ryong has expanded the cultural and literary horizon through his multi-layered epistemology of a provincial-regional-global framework. He is the author of “Literature of the Afflicted Generation,” “Literature of Concrete Life and Formation,” “Criticism of Korean Literature and the Open System,” “Newborn Literature,” “The Experience of Literature and Modernity,” “A Poetical Theory of Nature,” “Regional Literature and Peripheral Views,” “The Advocacy of a City,” “Emotional and Ethical” “East Asia in Modern Literature,” “The Coastal Scenery,” “Beyond Metaphor” and “Synecdoche.” He is the co-author of “A Poet’s Notebook,” “Art and Life,” and “Study of Baek Sinae.” Since 1993, he has been a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at Korea Maritime and Ocean University.
