Transcolonial Nationhood

Abstract

The genre of modern drama was established in Korea primarily during Japan’s occupation (1910–1945), by playwrights such as Yu Ch’i-jin who sought to represent Korean nationhood on stage. Yu was especially influenced by Irish playwrights, due to the parallels he recognized in the two colonial nations. Moreover, he was also concerned with the genre of modern drama on the global scale, as he agreed with his contemporaries that Korean literature must become interconnected with world literature. As a colonial writer, Yu wrote and staged Korean national drama that was inspired by Irish national drama, which he studied alongside other foreign – mostly European – literary traditions while studying in Japan. Françoise Lionnet’s concept of transcolonialism, a spatial approach to understanding the network of colonial literatures, will be used to analyze the complex set of influences on Yu’s writings.