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영어

This study analyzes the characteristics of Ma Hae Song’s postwar children’s books in order to examine how he tried to express his literary pursuit in his children’s books. As he pursued literary embodiment through resistance and fantasy based on national consciousness by the prewar period, Ma Hae Song extended internal consciousness in his children’s books to environmental destruction, life, tradition, hometown, nature, or ethics from the postwar period. The text this article is mainly focused on is the full-length children’s books, ｢Until Then｣ and ｢The World of Fish｣, and it also utilized as its auxiliary text other children’s books and essays, ｢The Old Cigarette Man’s Bird Cage｣, ｢Odoldol Hanwoomul｣. The full-length children’s book, ｢The World of Fish｣, both directly and indirectly shows respect for life and environmental destruction resulted from men’s selfishness. This work criticizes violence caused by hierarchy that minority groups or men monopolizing the power of science control and destroy men or other species that are weaker than themselves. ｢Until Then｣ created in the 1960’s criticizes civilization indirectly through the longing and consciousness of return to the traditional community and embodies the ethics of coexistence between men and nature literally; thus, his consciousness of ecology was more deepened literally than in ｢The World of Fish｣ in which he criticizes ecological destruction directly. The narrative of decline centering around Changsu’s family analogically exposes how civilization resulted from urbanization lead men or nature to separation, destruction, and death. Also, here, the main character (Yeonmyeong)’s return to his hometown symbolizes return to the space of ‘land=nature=regeneration’ where he sang about life treading on ‘grass’ and ‘barley’. After the Korean War, Ma Hae Song’s literary world is characterized by the consciousness of such things as men, nature, life, and ethics. His postwar children’s books are significant in that he extended the range of his consciousness to ‘Tao (道)’ in Taoism about the relationship between men and nature in not just criticizing reality but choosing a right way and also pursuing moral life. Ma Hae Song establishes that realizing equality and harmony between men and nature is the ideal that modern literature should pursue. Therefore, consciousness of life or return to tradition is suggested not just as the simple contrast of scientific civilization but as the origin to find out human nature, the literary response to overcome ecological danger. Here, we can see the elements of novelty in Ma Hae Song’s literature.