문학과 철학적 담론으로서의 ‘가능 세계’ -『유토피아』와 『걸리버 여행기』를 중심으로-

Abstract

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Thomas More's Utopia portray an ideal world in which they dreamed of solving contemporary social problems. Following Plato's Republic polemical discussions in philosophy and literature about how the ideal world could exist erupted. Philosophers and writers introduced utopian notions and thoughts in literary works and philosophical logic. Utopian novels had stories to subvert or revolutionize the already-made bases in society by a traveller who delved into the imaginary place but nowhere just in the fictional worlds. Utopia gave rise to imaginary resources of the possible worlds. They are called affirmative and negative utopian worlds. And it was the imaginary places to form man's right and proliferate scientific thinking as a notional tool. The hypothesis of utopia provides the basic framework to writers to scrutinize the events of social righteousness and the problems of the real world. For example, Swift represented many places fictionally describing them in a uniquely imaginative manner, but he didn't have a logical explanation specifically for the places. To him, utopia is the place where we can explore and enjoy it. But for us, it is the place where we can be understood, deviate and think of other places. Therefore, this paper studies possible worlds to access different fields as an interdisciplinary relation, debating the notion of utopia between philosophy and literature.