수량적 방법으로 본 한국문학사—이선영의 문학사회학을 계승하여

Abstract

This article aims to identify the characteristics of literary production in colonial Korea, building on the legacy of Lee Seon-young’s quantitative literary history. In particular, it explores the social networks through which authors engaged with various magazines, one of the main channels for publishing literary works, and also examines literary patterns that are not easily discernible within these networks. To achieve these objectives, we conducted basic statistical analyses (number of authors, number of works), a bipartite network analysis of authors and magazines, and a diachronic analysis of vocabulary in titles using a database containing 11,285 authors, 368 magazines, and 50,898 works from the “Literary Texts in Modern Korean Magazines” database. By dividing the period from 1906 to 1945 into eight phases, we found that, similar to previous research, the total number of works increased the most in the late 1930s. However, when comparing the rates of increase and decrease with earlier periods, we discovered that literary production through magazines exploded in the early to mid-1920s. The patterns of prolific authors, examined by period and genre, generally align with the known flow of modern literary history, but unexpected findings include figures who were not well-recognized in the literary world producing an overwhelming volume of work, or authors publishing more in genres other than their main focus. The author-magazine network, based on data from the simultaneous publication of works, reveals that the integration and concentration of modern literary forces through magazines was especially pronounced during the early to mid-1920s. Network analysis was also employed to investigate whether authors' post-liberation decisions—specifically, their choice of either North or South as the base for their literary production—constituted a “social decision.” In particular, we examined whether these choices aligned with the ideological inclinations of authors during the colonial period. Lastly, high-frequency vocabulary in titles was identified as a key indicator of the social and literary trends prevalent in each period. This study is indebted to Lee Seon-young’s quantitative and literary-sociological explorations. Such research seeks to perform empirical analyses that visualize the modern literary field without being bound by conventional literary history, thereby opening up the possibility for writing a new literary history grounded in digital humanities and offering a foundation for various follow-up studies.