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영어

This study examines how metadramatic traditions are revived in the works of Samuel Beckett and Lee Yun Taek, two modern dramatists representing English and Korean literature. Beckett's Waiting for Godot explores the fundamental role of stage, actors and audience through metadramatic features, eventually invalidating the boundary between stage and auditorium. In Citizen K and Oku, Lee Yun Taek also makes significant use of metadramatic devices such as play-within-a-play as well as co-existence of stage and auditorium. In order to gain these effects, he especially deconstructs and reconstructs gut, a traditional Korean ritual in which life and death interacts. In this respect, the two dramatists, transcending the space and time of their activities, successfully achieve the reconstruction of the inherent dramatic tradition and extend literary horizon, thus satisfying the metadramatic premise that life is a dream and that the world is a stage.