법률과 사실, 그리고 서사- 법문학비평의 관점에서 본 전근대 동아시아의 범죄소설

Recently, the interdisciplinary interaction between law and literature has tended to appear more active in an attempt to subvert the authoritarian rule of law and restore the humanity of law. The recent movement of literary criticisms of law has provided new perspectives and theoretical approaches. The “law as literature” perspective in this movement seems to draw our particular attention in that it enlarges the role of literature far beyond the literary realm. More importantly, the narrative criticism of law or “law as narrative” perspective takes activist positions by challenging the institutional authority and restoring social equity through legal storytelling or the use of narratives. This article attempts to interpret the genre of crime fiction of premodern East Asia from the perspective of literary criticisms of law. In fact, this genre, including Chinese court case (gong’an) fiction and Korean court case (songsa) fiction, was developed in the cultural contexts, in which the close interrelationship between law and narrative was well acknowledged. Indeed, the role of legal storytelling was considered significant in managing the subtle balance of sentiment⋅principle⋅law in the Confucian legal tradition. In this article, a nineteenth-century Korean court case story, A Criminal Case Record of Frog and Snake, is also examined as a prominent literary example revealing how the techniques of legal storytelling reflect the idea of law and justice in the traditional legal system.