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영어

"Tears of Blood", by Lee In-jik in 1906, a novel of the period of enlightenment, with the Sino-Japanese War as the background, expressed the discourse of enlightenment that the public should make themselves strong and wise with new education. It gave readers of those days impression with its narrative plot. The features of plot can be arranged like belows. First of all, the writer did not aim at reporting the details of the Sino-Japanese War but focusing on growing of the public in the novel. So, in the text, the greater part of the novel consisted of sufferings of the public and their awakening. The situation in which people suffered from the Sino-Japanese War and many families being broken up was given a great deal of weight on his writing, and Ok-ryeon and her father Kim Kwan-il, and Ku Wan-seo who went through these sufferings got to awaken went to the U.S to learn new education in the long run. Next, he curtailed the war situation in the novel. That is, he expressed the war situation in short with literary metaphor and brief description of the narrator in the novel : reduction of part of victory of Japanese over the war and despotism. In the ending part of it, Asianism discourse contradictive narrative were inserted. The contradictive plot of it could be interpreted as a kind of warning that Asianism discourse that the writer hoped mutual prosperity of three countries could not be hope nor make a national crisis clear up. The narrative plot, however, was different from political reality of those days, which was the narrative gap between the novel and reality. There was no alternative for it but to be in his novel because the object of it was neither recording the historical war nor letting us know the situation of those age but telling us his enlightenment discourse that new education itself can be the only way to make the public strong and wise. Besides, he intended to evade comment on political state of Korea, and Sino-Japanese War of literary metaphor showed his point of view that the future of Korea was dark. These were his limitations as he believed the theory of social evolution and he was one of the pro-Japanese. But "Tears of Blood" that made people abandon traditional class consciousness and encouraged the public to grow deserved to be estimated high. His novel, that expressed expectation for the power of the public and belief in the style of the unity of speech and writing and got readers to be moved, was some meaning of the history of literature.