Abstract

This study aims to make clear of the meanings, values and limits in Yi Tae-jun's maternal narratives such as <The Holy Mother>, <Three sisters> and so on. While the studies on Yi Tae-jun frequently commented on his creative motivation in relation to his pursuit on ideal father, this study starts from the question that his creative motivation related to his pursuit on ideal mother too. As an orphan, he pursued to an ideal mother different from the maternity in general modern home, at the same time he owned the fantasy of the ideal mother jointly that general man has in patriarchal system. We could criticise that Yi, Tae-jun exhaustively castrated sexuality in maternal body through the paradox of pregnant virginity in his maternal narratives. The paradox of mother, pregnant virginity was connected to a public home which consisted of a not-married-mother and an illegitimate child. This home was evoked the abundance of childhood to him(a son and writer), in order of sisterly love which was formed through the solidarity between a mothed and her sisters or her mother different from the general order of a two generation family. (In this point we could regard Yi, Tae-jun's novel as a narrative of an uterine ambition.) When we focus to Yi, Tae-jun's pursuit to ideal mother in relation to his memory of childhood which was abundant with his mother and his maternal grand-mother, we could estimate that his maternal narrative has positive meanings differently from other male writer's in colonial time.