A literary approach to Lim Jintaek's new pansori 1: On Damsi Pansori

This study aims to examine the diachronic changes in Lim Jintaek's new pansori from a literary perspective. Therefore, the 12 works of Lim's new pansori were categorized into Damsi Pansori, Testimony Pansori, and Great Man Pansori. This study focuses on their expressive features, story worlds, and aspects of artistic media. This is the first study to examine Damsi Pansori. Damsi Pansori is a new pansori created by Lim Jintaek based on Kim Jiha's Damsi. These included <Sorinaeryuk>, <Ddongbada>, and <Ojeok>. The expressive nature of Damsi Pansori is related to the change in genre from poetry to pansori. The symbolism of the poem is weakened, and the scenes are experienced vividly. Additionally, the story world is presented more vaguely than in other pansori. However, traditional expressive methods of pansori have been preserved, such as the division of functions between the song and Aniri and the narration from different viewpoints. Damsi Pansori emphasizes the immediacy of the story world so that it is considered a part of the real world that the audience is unaware of. In this story, the main characters are ugly, although they share different identities. “Ando,” “Samchondae,” and “Ojeok” are destroyed or deformed in terms of their physicality, humanity, or community, and the events they are involved in are asymmetrical. The wicked possess overwhelming power, and the exercise of that power is manifested in the triumph of evil and the prevalence of ugliness. Thus, Damsi Pansori suggests that the world experienced or represented by the “ugliness” of the narrative is present. In Damsi Pansori's artistic communication, the singer exposes the world’s ugliness. The audience witnesses the ugly world through the medium of the singer. Thus, the ugliness of the story world penetrates the real world where the audience is. Furthermore, it breaks down the solidity of the real world on which the audience relies. The aesthetics of ugliness impeach the illusion of a peaceful life and a world maintained by the authority and power of the state. Consequently, the audience experiences the uncanny, vague experience and confusion in which the normal sense of life and the world are disrupted.