| Values of literature in the curriculum of liberal arts: Self-reflection and Social awareness through esthetic experiences |
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Seongki In |
| 기초 교양 강좌로서의 문학 수업 |
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인성기 |
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| Abstract |
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In general, literature as art is a very dynamic and complex entity. This paper contends that literature with its inherent esthetic potential can lead the reader to self-reflection and social awareness and, therefore, it is indispensible to include literature into college liberal arts courses.
German Idealists such as I. Kant, F. Schiller, J. W. Goethe, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, G. Lukacs and even J.-P. Sartre, as introduced and described in this paper with their classical or romantic theories of arts, have found in literature an endless source for the enlightenment of mankinds; they pointed out the mediating capacities of literature between the historical particularity of individuals and their repeatable universality, and the harmonizing capacity of a emotional imagination and a critical thinking reason by the reader, which could be utilized for the healing of the soul of the human beings in the alienated modern society.
The two Korean novels as interpreted in the paper reveal how the new generation, obsessed with the political and social mechanism of the modernity, think and act unconscious of themselves. The Reader, through the esthetic experience of a literary piece, can recognize his reality. With this potential to trigger cognition combined with aesthetic appreciation, literature could turn the stream of the cold rationalism and blind violence of modern existence right unto the mutual understanding and the formation of a new communicative community. |
| Key Words:
German Literature, self-reflction, social awareness, literary education, esthetic experience |
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