Abstract

This recent research attempts to outline the strangeness and heterogeneity which occurred in the process of accepting modern cultures in the 1920s Korean modern literatures. Surprise, alertness, and curiosity which were inevitable in the influx of modern cultures were described through the rhetorics of KI(strange) and KUE(grotesque). These have been revealed, in one sense, in terms of the repulsive metaphor comparing the modern and premodern, and in the other sense, in the metaphor of the surprise and marvelousness. In this process, KI and KUE were used as the means of values judgement, not as the rhetorics of ambiguity. However, these rhetorics were used differently when they were applied to the values judgement of female characteristics. Modern women in the strange and outlandish environment were described as "the bizarre beauty"; those women were considered as the subject of absurdity as well as the target of attention. In other words, modern women were neither negated nor abhorred, but represented as the subject of "nonsense" which overwhelmed the mere values judgement. This paper will examine the codification of women in the mass media from the perspective of materialism and snobbism.