『禹氏三稿』 硏究

Abstract

The motivations for this study is two-fold. Firstly, we introduce three collections of works by the Woo family to the academia and reveal their literary reality. Secondly, we discover and study the literary legacies of the inland regions of South Chungcheong province to investigate the region’s Sino-Korean literature, which was relatively neglected in traditional Sino-Korean literature research. The Three Collections of Works by the Woo Family consists of O-nam-go (梧南稿), O-nam-jip (梧南集), and Mong-nae-si (夢乃詩); the first two were written by Woo Jooyoung (禹周榮, 1822~1890), who lived in Cheongyang region of South Chungcheong province in the 19th century, and the latter was written by his son Woo Hyundai (禹顯大, 1864~1900). The two collections by Woo Jooyoung are virtually poetry collections. Although there is some overlap between the two collections, they are clearly independent works. The collection by Woo Hyundai is entitled the Diary Literature of Entrance to the MaGok Temple and can be considered a poetry collection as well as it contains 52 pieces of traditional Korean poetry. The literary sentiment of O-nam-go can be characterized by the candid expression of the inner state, warm perspective regarding nearby objects, and typical usage of rhetorics and authentic precedents. The literary characteristics of O-nam-jip (梧南集) consist of the preference of long poems, the effort to use rhyming words in constructing the poems, and sophisticated rhetoric achievements. Mong-nae-jip (夢乃集) can be characterized by its expressions regarding human anguish, the sentiments experienced in a mountainside temple, and literary configuration of the solitary ego. From this introduction and study of the Three Collections of Works by the Woo Family, we can witness the distinguished Sino-Korean literary traditions of the inland regions of South Chungcheong province. We argue that such studies ultimately expand and intensify scope of area studies research.