Mujŏng: An Introduction to Yi Kwangsu's Fiction

Beginning with Mujŏng published in 1971, Yi Kwangsu (1892-?) published four major novels dealing with contemporary themes, each appearing at seven or eight years interval. The last novel, Sarang appeared in 1939. Each of the four novels develops two separate, though related, narrative strands, one of patriotic love and the other of love between a man and a woman. Through a discussion of Mujŏng I hope to demonstrate a direct relationship between this dual-narrative technique and the dual goals of Yi's fiction, the "awakening of our people through writing and education" on the one hand and "unfolding vividly and truthfully ... the imagined world of the author" on the other. We note that these two goals often conflict, the one leading to didacticism, and the other to art.