어슐라 르 귄의 SF와 환타지 문학에 나타난 노장사상과 조화의 미학

초록

Of English writers equipped with high literary quality and assimilated with traditional East Asian thinking, Ursula Le Guin has been exceptionally misunderstood both in the United and Korea by literary studies and academics. Under the traditional belief that realistic fiction alone deserves to be a subject of legitimate literary study and attention, Le Guin has been dismissed and neglected because she has been known as just one of those writers of SF and fantasy literature whose genre has constantly been put down as lowbrow. In the United States since the 1980s, however, Le Guin in fact has been started to be revalued by some literary critics specifically from feminism and ecological literature as a pioneering writer of this genre who, unlike most male SF․fantasy writers, deals with the same subjects that traditional realistic fiction has dealt with, the subjects such as human nature and feeling, and social, political, or cultural issues like gender roles and environmental problems. As a system of thought, Taoism, along with feminism, has most influenced Le Guin’s writing. Since the age of 14, she has been captivated by Taoist thinking, and it has continually nourished her with an artistic inspiration. She has been especially fascinated by Taoism’s two basic concepts—the concept of harmony and dynamic equilibrium of dualistic opposites on the one hand and the concept of inaction, or the-way-follows-what-is, on the other. It is such Taoist philosophy that Le Guin employs in order to carry out “thought experiments” in her SF and fantasy fiction in which human beings are placed in circumstances that highlight certain human predicaments in regard to human behavior or awareness. In her fantasy The Wizard of Earthsea, Taoist philosophy guides a young wizard to the realization that human beings should not disturb equilibrium of nature world and that they need to accept dark side of human nature to become whole. Her representative SF The Left Hand of Darkness follows the tenet of Taoist yin-yang in foregrounding limits and absurdity of gender division and roles.

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