SUMMARY

The purpose of this thesis is to compare and contrast the features of Korean narrative folk songs with those of Hungarian ballads in the hope of contributing towards the studies of the generic conception of Korean narrative folk songs. Through this cross-examination we can disprove the idea that the diffusion of ballads is only in Europe, by demonstrating similar generic characteristics in Korean narrative folk songs. The Hungarian ballad and the Korean narrative folk song were usually performed for a smaller community – very often during weaving and spinning or stripping maize. They have no battle ballads, no sea ballads, no ballads of shapeshifting. Ballads of individual or family tragidies form the central body of both Korean narrative folk songs and Hungarian ballads. Miraculous elements are almost completely missing from the majority of both of them. The story always takes place in a common environment, depicting the fate of common people. Both genres may be defined as realistic poetry. The key to the interpretation of themes is not the literal meanings of the story but the singers and listeners attitudes toward the story. T. Coffin called it “emotional core.” The 'emotional core' of the common people intensively appears in the ending part of a song. Comparing to the ballad, the ending part of a ‘frustration’ step that reflects a strong reality is frequent in the narrative folksong, and a romantic ‘paradoxical solution’ is the main in the ballad. The narrative folksong and the ballad which show the emotional core of the common people are highly evaluated as one of the origins of a modern realism literature, and in all probability the expression of the popular literature contributed to the development of modern national literature. The ballad and the narrative folk song are based on true life and the real world. The main characters of ballads and narrative folk songs are good and bad, sinful and innocent people, in whom these characteristics mix, just like in real-life people. The ballad and the narrative folk song express human feelings at first; they see the world as if it is neither better, nor worse. They consider their own problem as the center of the world, their own story is of central importance, they arrange the world according to their own image, yet they always remain real. For the main character of the ballad and the narrative folk song, the whole world is created for him only to live in it. The evident common characteristic of Hungarian folk ballad and Korean narrative folk song is the rhymeless octosyllabic lines together with the old pentatonic tune. The manner of performance is concise and staggered. As individual features are missing, the characters do not represent personalities, but rather types. The ballad and the narrative folk song narrate a single, usually tragic, episode in their lives. We do not learn anything about their previous lives, as the ballad and the narrative folk song does not characterize. Most of both genres undoubtedly have sad endings. The story usually ends in tragedy. The reason for the tragedy usually lies outside the lover`s personal relationships, most often it is the opposition of their families to their love, due to differences in social position. Both Korean narrative folk songs and Hungarian ballads relate individual tragedies. The conflict is strictly a personal affair. This surely describes the cultural and social background at the time when the ballads and narrative folk songs were composed. They reflect a social structure when personal affairs had ceased to be of public interest, and also when the community life of large households or clans had disappeared. A comparison with Korean narrative folk songs draws attention to another common feature of Hungarian ballads. The central character is almost always a woman. This suggests that ballad-singing was practised much more by women in Korea and Hungary, and it would corroborate our research that ballad-singing was very much connected with the weaving in the spinning-room. Certain special characteristics of Hungarian ballads and Korean narrative folk songs with respect to the narrative technique are also revealed by comparison. Hungarian ballads and Korean narrative folk songs burst into speech at the denouement, without introducing the characters. The actions are given in strict chronological order, and the ballad and the narrative folk song are told from the point of view of one person only. In the Hungarian ballads the revelatory quality of dramatic speech is far more important than description or the narration of events. Incremental repetition is a ballad device equally prominent in Hungarian and Korean balladry, but while in Hungarian ballads it is significantly used in the dialogue part, in Korean narrative folk songs it appears usually in the narrative. Its style is made rhythmic and lively primarily by dialogue. The dialogues themselves are not like quotations, so as a result, they are not introduced by a narrator. The essential ingredient of the ballad is the dialogue, which is making the characters speak. It increases the dramatic effect by condensing the ballad and adding dramatical tension to the ballad. Dialogues are the complementary links of the plot, and the episode of the plot is enfolded in dialogues. In the social meaning, the themes of both genres are a resistance to the feudal • patriarch social system that is based on the moral law of Confucianism or Calvinism. From the literary point of view, the common people of the narrative folksong and the ballad criticize indirectly an injustice and an immorality of an actuality (reality), and sublimate into a level of literature, and are ultimately treating the lofty subject that is a recovery and liberation of humanity from a social stratum and gender.