이 글에서는 식민지 말기부터 1950년대 중반까지의 정비석 소설을 각 시대적 맥락 위에서 읽음으로써 파편적, 일면적으로 고찰되어온 정비석 문학의 문제성을 전면화하고자 했다. 특히 한국전쟁 이후 미국 헤게모니하 한국문화 재편의 과정에서 창작된 『자유부인』, 『민주어족』 등의 대중문학이 『사상계』 지식인 담론에 소설적 육체를 부여함으로써, 지배계급과 지식인 엘리트 집단 사이의 정치적 분열을 구조화하고 있다는 사실을 분석했다. 또한 왜곡된 근대화를 ‘자유부인’이라는 여성 젠더를 통해 표상하면서, 올바른 근대화의 중심으로 소환하는 ‘부덕’, ‘인종’ 등의 전통 윤리가 식민지 말기 파시즘 윤리를 구성했던 세목들을 재구조화한 것임을 규명하였다. 결론적으로 정비석 문학을 사례로 식민지 말기, 해방기, 1950년대의 한국문학을 연속/비연속의 ‘겹눈’의 관점을 통해 접근하는 새로운 방법론의 필요성을 제시했다.

The purpose of this study is to newly examine and reveal the problematic facets of Jung Bee-suk's works that have been analysed too fragmentary or one-sidedly. For this I will read his novels in the connection with each period's contexts from the late colonial period to the middle of 1950s. Especially his popular literature including Jayu-buin and Minju-ohjok, which were written during the process that Korean culture was being reorganized under American hegemony, injected bodies' discourses into the intellectual discourses of the journal Sa-sang-gye. As a result, it can exemplify the fact that his novels played a role to structuralize the political rupture between the ruling classes and the elite groups. In addition, I'd like to point out that by representing the distorted modernization through a female gender, ‘Jayu-buin’, the traditional morals such as ‘buduk(womanly virtues)’ and 'injong(self-surrender)' were the restructuralized ones from the items of fascist ethics of the late colonial period. Finally, I present the argument that there should be new approaches on the Korean literature of the late colonial period, the liberation period and 1950s through this case study of Jung Bee-suk's works. And the new approaches should be based on the points of view of both continuous and discontinuous ‘compound eye’.