A Study On The Korean Imagist Poetry Of 1930s

Modernism is popular in the Europe and United States as a literary trend of bourgeois literature at the end of 19th century and early 20th century. It is also the reflection of the society's spiritual crisis and the artistic crisis in the field of literature and art in the west. The word "modernism" is originated by the French word "Moderne" with the meaning of latest, modern and pioneer and so on. The main features of modernism is opposing classical artistic tradition, and seeking new and maverick things in the theme and technique. It has a wild nature in the spirit, and authors did not focus on the external objective world but their own poor and vacuous inner world.European and American modernism can be divided into two schools from the broad perspective. One is radicals such as Dada and surrealism which popular in the Europe, and the other is moderates that advocated by British and American imagism poets representing by Pang De.This paper first understands the concept of modern literature, the background and the nature, and discusses the modernism poetry which moved to the Korean literature in the 1930s.This paper takes imagism, intellectualism and modernism as main point to discuss the literary trend before and after 1930s of Korean literature. Modernism occupies a very important position in the history of Korean modern literature, but the arguments reflect a wide range of mixed flow phenomenon by confusing up modernism, imagism and intellectualism. So far, very few people deep study on this mixed flow phenomenon.This paper regards imagism and intellectualism as inferior concept of the modernism, seeks to clarify the common and specific characteristics between imagism and intellectualism based on previous studies, and organizes and further explores the process of acceptance of modern poetry and the features of Korean modern poetry. On this basis, it analyses the poetry of kim Girim, Jeong Jiyong and Kim Gwangyun who are the representative poets of Korean imagism poetry in the 1930s. It also understands how the imagism literary trend shows out in the procession of practical creating works, and reveals the important role of Kim Girim, Choi Jaeseo and other poets in the spread of theory in the process of Korean literature accepting modernism in the 1930s. Among them Kim Girim can be regarded as the Father of Korean modern poetry. He not only did indelible contribution to the introduction and spread of theory but also accounted for a place in the creation in poetry. Besides Kim Girim, Jeong Jiyong and Kim Gwangyun's imagism poetry added luster to the Korean poetry in the 1930s.In short, it emerges a mixed flow phenomenon of intellectualism, imagism and modernism in the process of Korean literature accepting the modern literary trend of thought which first rise in Europe and United States. Intellectualism put emphasis on the highly sensible attitude in the creation of poetry, but imagism takes the image of poetry the most important. It requires selecting the most appropriate and most accurate language to create poetry making it as a language drawn image. Kim Girim played an important role in the spread of poetic theory of Korean imagism as well as modernism while Jeong Jiyong is the most important poet in the practical creation of works.