The "Androgynous Mind" in the Postwar Poetry of Pak In-hwan

Abstract: This study examines gendered poetic language in Korean postwar modernism in the context of Virginia Woolf's "androgynous mind," as understood in Rita Felski's The Gender of Modernity (1995). Specifically, the values represented in the poetic landscapes of Pak In-hwan (1926–1956), one of the poets representing Korean postwar modernist poetry in the 1950s, will be reconsidered in light of literary gender. Pak In-hwan's poetic approach is sympathetic to women and does not express male-centricity to the same extent as the contemporaneous male intelligentsia. Close reading also shows that his poetic diction reflects an awareness, unique for the time, of gendered language in Korean poetry, as well as his pursuit of Woolf's androgyny. Pak's position among Korean postwar modernist poets can be reevaluated by revisiting his poetic world with a focus on the androgynous mind manifested in his writings.