Abstract

Devoted to the search for ego, the 1990s saw the publication of a good number of travel novels, in which the weak main characters were wandering around, along with the disappearance of grand narratives. Following the structure of returning to the original point in the sequence of settlement, leaving, and settlement, travel novels are part of the genre fiction claiming their place in the literary history with 'Mansejeon' and 'Mujingihaeng'. After capitalism settled down, there appeared a new kind of travelers who showed the Bobos characteristics in the digital age and wished to leave the cities of no true feelings. As a repeating writer that built a consistent world of his works through travel novels, Yun Dae-nyeong has been highly evaluated for such thematic ideas as the sensitivity of the 1990s, characteristics of aesthetics of literary styles, and returning to the beginning of existence. In this study, however, it was noted that the themes of his literary works also included the absence of communication between the family and its members or between individuals(especially women), who got their wounds in the 1990s, difficulty with creating relationships, and unstable marriage life. Encounters with women on the road would bring self-incestuous love or despair to the heroes and provide no fundamental solutions to their problems. Employing the images of Yin such as woman, the moon, desert, snow, and winter, Yun emphasizes the needs for feminine images in the contemporary time. But, in the eyes of the postmodern male travelers, women would merely go through the process of dichotomy and othering between the angels and witches or between the ladies on the road and wives. As the male travelers steal a glance at the ladies on the road, they are idealized as the ladies of religious faith or salvation and thus fail to represent the self-regulating femininity. Despite those aspects, Yun's literary works made a contribution to the establishment of the genre fiction called travel novels in the 1990s and claim significance in that he made constant attempts to write innovative and experimental travel novels like "The Traveler of Snow". Furthermore, the changes to his works such as the efforts to recover the relationships with the family and home by moving from searching for the fathers or women to searching for children and from fantasy to reality, made the readers have expectations for the diverse possibility of travel novels later.