• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.151-159
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• 2013

Formalism narrative theory adopts the dualism of Fabula, story material and Sujet, story substance. The recent theories of storytelling convert the dualism into story and storytelling. This essay delves into the mechanism of contemporary storytelling by comparatively analyzing the storytelling of two films, A Korean film, Family Ties and A Hollywood film, Little Miss Sunshine, which are considered to represent contemporary storytelling. While the latter builds its structure through desire usually shown in the classical Hollywood films, the former has the structure which has nothing to do with causality by displaying fragmented stories. And the latter has typical characters, while the former shows totally different reality, using the obscure characters. In conclusion, Little Miss Sunshine has a storytelling which puts audience feeling in tune by controlling it, and Family Ties has one which delivers director's intention.

• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.179-196
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• 2001

According to Formalist theory, form is not separate from content. Form does not merely convey or express content but can itself produce meaning. The close correlation of the narrative structure, more specifically the time structure of the narrative, and the narrative style of Kim Seung-Ok′s short story′"Travel in Mujin" provides a good example of this argument. The story opens with the first-person narrator, currently living in the bustling city of Seoul, back in his small provincial home town Mujin, where he brings up memories that had been hitherto suppressed. The revived memories are ordered into the narrator′s present thought structure, in effect bridging the vast psychological rift between the lost past and the present. The narrator′s travel in Mujin thus becomes a psychological journey, and Mujin becomes a psychological space where the narrator can experience the continuity of his own being. The "narrating I" excludes the principles of reality from his narrative, concentrating on the inner thoughts, recollections, psychological experience, and the level of consciousness of the "narrated I." This narrative attitude or style expresses the narrator-protagonist′s acceptance and affirmation of the thoughts and actions occur in Mujin (which he had till now been resistant to). It is also an affirmation of the narrative act itself. Before the travel back to Mujin, the narrator-protagonist′s thoughts about his home town was ambivalent-an attitude originating from nostalgia, together with the narrator-protagonist′s ambivalent attitude toward his youthful past. It is a reflection of the narrator-protagonist′s desire for purity intermingled with a disdain for his enervated existence in Seoul. This ambivalence is resolved by the "I" of the narrative present, and Mujin enables him to come to a renewed affirmation of his life.