조선시대 서적유통 및 매매의 문화적 의미

Abstract

People of all confucian society thought that commercial act like private book trade was under taboo in the Choseon dynasty. By the way, actually book's buying and selling was real life, and especially upper class readers didn't like selling books, but enjoyed buying them. It is ironical that main readers were under taboo in trading books, but they were generous to buy book itself. In the circumstance of not existing private bookstore until the 19th century, actual trade of numerous books was accomplished personally or by book-broker(Chaekkoi冊儈). Chaekkoi had been active from the 15th Century to the middle of 20th Century, they acted mainly as a substitute for bookstore. There were several ways to trade books, eg, 1) donation or a present, 2) purchasing books from owner, book-broker, bookstore, book market, and China. Book's buying and selling could be caused by vigorous using of coins in circulation in the late of Choseon dynasty. There are some reasons that book owner had no choice but to sell books, being treated like treasure. For example, a poor person among the intellectual class ought to sell books 1) to buy a house for rent, 2) to cure a person of a disease, 3) conduct a funeral, though they were the upper classes and educated person. On the other hand, an educated person was attached to buy books for collection of books and studying and to develop local old-time school belonging to the Confucian shrine. But book's purchase and distribution in the Choseon dynasty was not inefficient, because learning of knowledge by buying books didn't contribute to the growth of all society and the market economy, though only the upper classes acquired moral richness and self-realization. Cultural meaning and value of book trading was not only negative, even though system of reading book was not inefficient. Because there is cultural value of book's buying and selling like these : Buying and selling of books is able to do 1) overcome of moral separation between writer and reader, reader and reader, reader and book-brokers, 2) overcome of place-separation between city and a countryside, Choseon and China etc., 3) overcome of time separation between the past and the present, the matter for delivering and spreading of new knowledge from China to Choseon, 4) overcome of ideological separation. Book's buying and selling in the Choseon dynasty is history of overcome of moral and ideological separation, but it also obviously has the limits of cultural and conscious stiffness.