Literary translation and appropriation: Korean intellectuals' reception of nineteenth-century Russian prose via Japan, 1909--1927

Translation and appropriation have played a central role in the formation of most modern national literatures. Korean literature is no exception. During the first decades of the twentieth century, Korean intellectuals translated and adapted foreign texts enthusiastically, and the most popular of these were Russian. Russian literature was a figure of a socially engaged literature under an oppressive authoritarian regime. Employing both historical approaches and close literary readings, this dissertation examines Korean writers' incorporation of Russian literature in the process of forging their own modern literature.;The process of Korean intellectuals' reception of Russian literature was significantly affected by the mediation of Japanese language and culture. Due primarily to the colonial relationship between Japan and Korea, most Korean intellectuals' contact with Russian literature occurred through Japan. This study investigates patterns of linguistic mediation and cultural mediation, which were affected historically by the Russo-Japanese War, Russian-language education in Japan and Korea, higher education of Koreans in Japan, and the Japanese reception of Russian literature.;Questioning the assumption that translation is a secondary and degraded activity, my research reveals the creative function of translation in the period when the value hierarchy assigned to the work of writer and translator had not consolidated and the translation was not yet marginalized. Focusing on the translation and appropriation of Russian texts by Ch'oe Nam-soˇn, Yi Kwang-su, Hyoˇn Chin-goˇn, and Cho Myoˇng-huˇi, I argue that translation was a fully creative, present, and responsive form of intellectual work in the formative period of modern Korean literature, and that colonized Korean intellectuals translated and adapted foreign texts to build a form of modern literature that would respond to their society's historical situation.