• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.103-141
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• 2019

The purpose of this paper is to examine the logic of choice, transformation, and exclusion in The Song of sword, comparing it with the historical records. This paper explains how a novel is 'produced'. Through this, it searches for the aspects in which The Song of sword changed into 'a narrative revealing the disillusionment of the novel's subject with the world'. In the logic of choice, it explores which time and space were chosen in the novel, and which character was chosen to prepare the content and formal framework of the novel. In the logic of transformation, it is confirmed that the meaning of 'individual' is highlighted in the novel, unlike the historical records, by transforming both the character of the enemy and the meaning of war. In the logic of exclusion, it studies the characteristics of the modern (novel's) subject in the novel by excluding the characteristics of the historical subject that existed in a particular time and space. This paper differs from previous studies in that it examines the way in which a novel is produced by comparing and analyzing The Song of sword based on the historical records. Through these analyses, we can see the unity of various heterogeneous elements, such as the historical reality, the writer's ideology and imagination, and the desire of the contemporary in the form of a novel. Also, by examining the elements of text that can not be sutured into a complete form, we can see the meaning of the novel's text as an unstable system.