효행설화연구

Abstract

The Filial Piety Folk tales deal with obedience to parents. In the stories, most of the filial piety occurs under the condition in which filial piety can not be expected at all as there is a serious deficit and hardship. When the greatest filial piety is given to parents even under hardship, unimaginable things happen. People expect to have the sense of achievement obtained as a result of filial piety. The more severe hardship they experience in doing good things to parents, the acts of the children are considered more valuable and they can have more increased sense of achievement and happiness. The folktales that reflect the idea are spread and transmitted widely to reinforce the concept of filial piety. We have many extant stories on filial piety, which indicates filial piety is closely involved in life of our people. Filial piety is derived from the primitive relations between parents and children and is considered as absolute morals of traditional society. Traditional society was a patriarchal society focusing on heads of families, that is, men, and obedience to parents was considered as a priority. Based on subordination to parents, parents' life was considered more important than children's life, but it contributed to reinforcement of family union and establishment of social order. Current society achieved materialistic affluence through changed recognition based on reorganized family systems or new thoughts and individualism along with materialistic civilization, but has moral crises such as abandonment of parents or isolation of people, and immoral cases are frequently occurring. To overcome these problems, we have to consider filial devotion stories as food for thought and examine it in terms of modern viewpoint. This study classified the types of filial piety folk tales according to hardship based on about 780 folk tales on filial piety recorded in < Korea Traditional Literature > and compared the folk tales in Honam area with those from other regions to identify specificity and meaning of filial devotion stories in Honam area. However, there are some limitations in identifying aspects and specificity of filial piety folk tales in Honam area based on < Korea Traditional Literature >, but this study obtained the following results and the discussion above is summarized as follow: Filial piety folk tales deal with filial devotion centering on devotional acts in families. Its meaning should be found in correlations between family members in a space of family. The acts or circumstances of filial piety do not occur easily. They occur in circumstances of hardship and extreme circumstances are brought by the hardship. There are 799 filial piety folk tales nationwide, and in particular, there are 305 stories in Honam area. It indicates that filial piety and families have been considered as precious in this area. And in Honam area, there are many people and their acts involved in filial devotion. As above 60 year-old-people transmit the stories by word of mouth, educational contents of filial piety folk tales could be easily transmitted to descendants. This study is interested in 'hardship' that occurs when the subject of filial devotion give filial devotion to parents as objects and classified types of devotion according to hardship. The hardship in the stories is developed through poverty, diseases of parents, death, accidents, absence of a life partner, conflicts between family members, religious rites to ancestors and mourning at the parents' graves. The stories are developed centering on problems of hardship and the problems cause another circumstances of hardship and conflicts, which are mingled in complex manner. For subjects of the piety, women are mainly subjects of the piety compared to men, and the objects are usually step mothers or step parents, which is thought to have been derived from personality of Honam people. In the filial piety folk tales in Honam area, devotion is given even to parents of friends or in neighborhood. It means that it unifies neighborhood and society beyond a narrow idea of my family. Tigers, magpies, dogs and snakes appear as supporters of filial piety, and heroes of the folk tales are varied irregardless of class status, age and sex. And for value and recommendation of filial piety acts, extreme circumstances are provided. Such hardship is an aspect of true life and a trace people experience, not a imaginary circumstance that may happen in stories. Social meaning of the stories includes recommendations of forgiveness and reconciliation, recognition of sex by the old people, attention and consideration for the old people with senile dementia, filial devotion for family, women as subjects of filial piety, and extreme circumstances for recommendation of devotional senses. Family collective senses shown in filial piety of Honam area are parents-centered thoughts, will to overcome extreme reality, family-centered thought, family community spirit, sacrificing oneself to preserve one's integrity and sense of life respect.