• Sijohaknonchong
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• v.25
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• pp.49-73
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• 2006

The poetic theme is a unified principle of which a poet writes poems out in his work. Theme is a poet's central thought expressed in his works. And it was described on the basis of writer's view of the world and life. In this study, I divided the themes of modern Sijo into three kinds according to the materials for a poem. Especially I am interested not so much in the poems taking outer problems of human life for the subject of a poem as in poems dealing with fundamental problems of human life such as self-consciousness, death, God's presence. Firstly, in modern Sijo which deals with poet's self-reflection and self-consciousness as a poet, poets examine himself. And he intends to write poems more severely. The more poet reflects self-consciousness, the more earnestly he tries hard to write good poems. As a poet. he feels complication between real-self and ideal self, so he tries to conquer the shame made in the gab of them. And he takes writing poems into his divinely appointed work in life. A kind of meta-Sijo is written in this circumstances. Secondly, there are modern Sijo, which shows deep concerns in death problems of human life. Thanatopsis expressed in modern Sijo is connected with poet's personal experiences. In most cases, poet describes fragmentary thoughts, sorrows and agony after death of his intimate persons. In Sijo, however, poets don't dig Into the death problem deep enough because of the characteristics of genre. But it is very significant work to take various materials of death into poetic themes in Sijo in that it makes us to reflect of human attitude of life. Thirdly, the poetic themes of dealing with fundamental problems of human and God are expressed in Sijo based on Christian view of the world. In such a poems, poet complains to God who looks in illogical human situations as a spectator of vulgar realities of life. But ultimately. poet expresses deep affirmation and obedience of God in his poems. So he manifests Christianity by the poetic paradox. Such poems change over the theme of modern Sijo the superficial Problems of reality to the deep situation of life.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.191-221
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• 2019

This study aims to analyze the post-humanistic imagination that has emerged as a major academic thesis in Korean literature, especially novels. In particular, this paper focuses on Cho Ha-hyung's two novels Chimera's Morning(2004) and A Prefabricated Bodhi Tree(2008), published in the early 2000s, for intensive analysis. Post-humanism can be seen as an extension of post-modernism that tried to overcome the limitations of modernity and seek to establish a new world view. In particular, this thought pays attention to the comprehensive understanding of how the rapid development of science and technology, which has developed since the 20th century, has changed the view of humanity and human-centered civilization itself. At the concrete level, it is developing in the direction of constructing a new subject idea by reflecting and dismantling Western-, reason-, and male-centered power mechanisms that are the core of modern civilization. Cho attempts to discover and re-illuminate the surrounding figures, non-humans, and objects that were not noticed in the classic works written in the past. This ideological flow reflects the fact that the concept of human beings, which had been dominated by the humanities in recent years, has been completely changed, and the natural science and technology perspective is applied to the discourse field in various ways. From the point of view of post-humanism, objects that have not been classified as humans and objects that were considered inferior to humans should be included in human or comparable levels. These questions generate interdisciplinary research tasks by involving the large categories of philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology and empirical fields, as well as calling for the participation of the entire literature, science and social sciences. Against the backdrop of a disaster-hit world, Chimera's Morning and A Prefabricated Bodhi Tree depict human beings as variants transformed by bio-technology, and creatures made out of the artificial intelligence built by computer simulations. Post-humanistic ideas in Cho's novels provide a reflective opportunity to comprehensively reconsider the world's shape and human identity reproduced in the text, and to re-explore boundary lines and hierarchy order that distinguish between human and non-human.