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영어

HonBul(The Light of Soul), written by Choi, Myoung-Hee, one of the most famous female writers in Korea, is a large-scale historical narrative famous of it's vast and detailed knowledge about the traditional Korean folk customs. The fact that a vast range of popular morals of ancient Korean community are introduced and depicted to its substantial essence is it's virtue. But the novel also is known as having some definite limit that the amount of knowledge is too large to keep balance with the historical narratives of the lives of the contemporary people and historical meaning inherent in their lives of that era. So, because the novel's knowledge about the facts overwhelms and substitutes the specific lives of historical beings, to some critics, the novel is regarded showing deficiency as a historical narrative from which in it's own definition be demanded a narrative of organizational totality of a specific times, spaces, objects and human lives. It seems to be because of the novel's undifferentiated mixing historical law of cause and effect with a vast, but fragmented knowledges of traditional customs. Nevertheless, HonBul(The Light of Soul) should be lifted out of it's all defects, and so be the author, because the universe of HonBul reconstructed by author is shining brilliantly with the valuable cultural heritage of our own nation, and because the light of which is providing so much bright spot to our contemporary civil life. The traditional community depicted in HonBul is a world consisted of true hearted human beings, noble formalities of politeness and respect for neighbors. That it is so-called a community of courtesy, forgotten in our present mundane world full of vulgar customs and relationships, is very the fact because of which HonBul and it's author should be respected constantly.