Images of Society in the Early Chos˘ on Literary Miscellany
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Most forms of biography in traditional Korea tend to emphasize a person’s ancestors, birth, and career(cursus honorum), with little attention paid to that person’s external appearance, garb or habits, contemporary details, and private life. Contrarily, writers of the literary miscellany attempt to discover telling details of the subject’s word, deed or gesture, personal views, and idiosyncracies. Their aim is to demonstrate what a man is like by an examination of what he does or says in order to uncover his personality and individual character. They also attribute verbs of inner action to the subject by quotation of speech. Their keen eye is for the single act that reveals the essence of an individual. While official history stresses a public version of the elite self, the literary miscellany describes the life styles and social milieu of all classes—officials, secondary sons, interpreters, artisans, physicians, monks, blinds, female entertainers, slaves, merchants—to provide a more balanced picture of society than that offered by official history and biography. The vivid depictions of these people illuminate our image of human beings. On the basis of nine works dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this study attempts to reconstruct images of early Chos˘ on society.
Abstract
Most forms of biography in traditional Korea tend to emphasize a person’s ancestors, birth, and career(cursus honorum), with little attention paid to that person’s external appearance, garb or habits, contemporary details, and private life. Contrarily, writers of the literary miscellany attempt to discover telling details of the subject’s word, deed or gesture, personal views, and idiosyncracies. Their aim is to demonstrate what a man is like by an examination of what he does or says in order to uncover his personality and individual character. They also attribute verbs of inner action to the subject by quotation of speech. Their keen eye is for the single act that reveals the essence of an individual. While official history stresses a public version of the elite self, the literary miscellany describes the life styles and social milieu of all classes—officials, secondary sons, interpreters, artisans, physicians, monks, blinds, female entertainers, slaves, merchants—to provide a more balanced picture of society than that offered by official history and biography. The vivid depictions of these people illuminate our image of human beings. On the basis of nine works dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this study attempts to reconstruct images of early Chos˘ on society.