Unyŏng-jŏn

Unyŏng-jŏn
Author: Michael J. Pettid
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2009
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Review: The story is about a girl who is chosen to receive a literary education in the Korean palace. She among the other 9 girls excell at poetry and live truely blessed lives compared to the average life of someone of their birth and sex. The main heartbreak of all the girls, but more so for Unyoung is that she will never be allowed to marry or have a romantic relationship. One day a poet prodigy comes to the palace to meet with the prince, who is the girl's patron. He writes such sublim poetry that Unyong falls in love with him, and writes to him, at which point he falls in love with her. The book is about their love affair, and the hardships they must endure due to confucious society that disallows them their natural disposition. -- from http://www.amazon.com (Dec. 17, 2014)

The Encyclopedia of Daily Life

The Encyclopedia of Daily Life
Author:
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824889649

This volume is a fully annotated translation of an early nineteenth-century encyclopedia, the Kyuhap ch’ongsŏ (The Encyclopedia of Daily Life). Written by Lady Yi (1759–1824) as a household management aid for her daughters and daughters-in-law, the work is a treasure trove of information on how women of higher status in the late Chosŏn (1392–1910) ran their households and conducted their daily lives. The encyclopedia opens with lengthy sections on making beverages and brewing a wide array of liquors (as well as remedies for the overconsumption of alcohol) and contains dozens of recipes for dishes ranging from numerous types of kimch’i to confections and rice cakes. The second part of the translation concerns prenatal care, childbirth, childrearing, and first aid for a large number of afflictions and medical conditions. An extensive introduction will help readers understand the times in which Lady Yi wrote her encyclopedia and the influences that fostered her love of scholarship. The work demonstrates the full sweep of her authority in the domestic sphere and the many aspects of day-to-day life that women needed to prepare for and manage. Her mastery of East Asian cosmology comes across clearly in her use of this knowledge to account for the workings of the world, the processes required to take care of one’s body, and interactions between humans and the natural world. The Encyclopedia of Daily Life will be an important reference for those studying medicine, botany, and the preparation of foodstuffs in premodern East Asian societies. It will also be a valuable linguistic reference to the Korean language during the late Chosŏn.

Epistolary Korea

Epistolary Korea
Author: JaHyun Kim Haboush
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2009-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231148038

By expanding the definition of "epistle" to include any writing that addresses the intended receiver directly, JaHyun Kim Haboush introduces readers to the rich epistolary practice of Chos?n Korea. The Chos?n dynasty (1392-1910) produced an abundance of epistles, writings that mirror the genres of neighboring countries (especially China) while retaining their own specific historical trajectory. Written in both literary Chinese and vernacular Korean, the writings collected here range from royal public edicts to private letters, a fascinating array that blurs the line between classical and everyday language and the divisions between men and women. Haboush's selections also recast the relationship between epistolography and the concept of public and private space. Haboush groups her epistles according to where they were written and read: public letters, letters to colleagues and friends, social letters, and family letters. Then she arranges them according to occasion: letters on leaving home, deathbed letters, letters of fiction, and letters to the dead. She examines the mechanics of epistles, their communicative space, and their cultural and political meaning. With its wholly unique collection of materials, Epistolary Korea produces more than a vivid chronicle of pre- and early modern Korean life. It breaks new ground in establishing the terms of a distinct, non-European form of epistolography.

Korea

Korea
Author: Keith Pratt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 598
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113679400X

Compiled by specialists from the University of Durham Department of East Asian Studies, this new reference work contains approximately 1500 entries covering Korean civilisation from early times to the present day. Subjects include history, politics, art, archaeology, literature, etc. The Dictionary is intended for students, teachers and researchers, and will also be of interest to the general reader. Entries provide factual information and contain suggestions for further reading. A name index and comprehensive cross-reference system make this an easy to use, multi-purpose guide for the student of Korea in the broadest sense.

Korean Cuisine

Korean Cuisine
Author: Michael J. Pettid
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2008
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 9781861893482

Over the last two millennia, Korean food dishes and their complex preparations have evolved along with the larger cultural and social upheavals experienced by the nation. Pettid charts the historical development of the cuisine, using literary and historical accounts to examine the ways that regional distinctions and historical transformations played out in the Korean diet.

The Emotions of Justice

The Emotions of Justice
Author: Jisoo M. Kim
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295806176

The Choson state (1392–1910) is typically portrayed as a rigid society because of its hereditary status system, slavery, and Confucian gender norms. However, The Emotions of Justice reveals a surprisingly complex picture of a judicial system that operated in a contradictory fashion by discriminating against subjects while simultaneously minimizing such discrimination. Jisoo Kim contends that the state’s recognition of won, or the sense of being wronged, permitted subjects of different genders or statuses to interact in the legal realm and in doing so illuminates the intersection of law, emotions, and gender in premodern Korea.

From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men

From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men
Author: Yoon Sun Yang
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2020-05-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1684175801

"The notion of the individual was initially translated into Korean near the end of the nineteenth century and took root during the early years of Japanese colonial influence. Yoon Sun Yang argues that the first literary iterations of the Korean individual were prototypically female figures appearing in the early colonial domestic novel—a genre developed by reform-minded male writers—as schoolgirls, housewives, female ghosts, femmes fatales, and female same-sex partners. Such female figures have long been viewed as lacking in modernity because, unlike numerous male characters in Korean literature after the late 1910s, they did not assert their own modernity, or that of the nation, by exploring their interiority. Yang, however, shows that no reading of Korean modernity can ignore these figures, because the early colonial domestic novel cast them as individuals in terms of their usefulness or relevance to the nation, whether model citizens or iconoclasts. By including these earlier narratives within modern Korean literary history and positing that they too were engaged in the translation of individuality into Korean, Yang’s study not only disrupts the canonical account of a non-gendered, linear progress toward modern Korean selfhood but also expands our understanding of the role played by translation in Korea’s construction of modern gender roles."

Women and Confucianism in Choson Korea

Women and Confucianism in Choson Korea
Author: Youngmin Kim
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438437757

A new, multifaceted look at Korean women during a period of strong Confucian ideology.

Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in Korea

Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in Korea
Author: Charlotte Horlyck
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824876768

Death and the activities and beliefs surrounding it can teach us much about the ideals and cultures of the living. While biologically death is an end to physical life, this break is not quite so apparent in its mental and spiritual aspects. Indeed, the influence of the dead over the living is sometimes much greater than before death. This volume takes a multidisciplinary approach in an effort to provide a fuller understanding of both historic and contemporary practices linked with death in Korea. Contributors from Korea and the West incorporate the approaches of archaeology, history, literature, religion, and anthropology in addressing a number of topics organized around issues of the body, disposal of remains, ancestor worship and rites, and the afterlife. The first two chapters explore the ways in which bodies of the dying and the dead were dealt with from the Greater Silla Kingdom (668–935) to the mid-twentieth century. Grave construction and goods, cemeteries, and memorial monuments in the Koryŏ (918–1392) and the twentieth century are then discussed, followed by a consideration of ancestral rites and worship, which have formed an inseparable part of Korean mortuary customs since premodern times. Chapters address the need to appease the dead both in shamanic and Confucians contexts. The final section of the book examines the treatment of the dead and how the state of death has been perceived. Ghost stories provide important insight into how death was interpreted by common people in the Koryŏ and Chosŏn (1392–1910) while nonconformist narratives of death such as the seventeenth-century romantic novel Kuunmong point to a clear conflict between Buddhist thought and practice and official Neo-Confucian doctrine. Keeping with unendorsed views on death, the final chapter explores how death and the afterlife were understood by early Korean Catholics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in Korea fills a significant gap in studies on Korean society and culture as well as on East Asian mortuary practices. By approaching its topic from a variety of disciplines and extending its historical reach to cover both premodern and modern Korea, it is an important resource for scholars and students in a variety of fields.

A Concise History of Korea

A Concise History of Korea
Author: Michael J. Seth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2024
Genre: History
ISBN: 1538174545

Now in a fully revised and updated edition, this comprehensive text surveys Korean history from Neolithic times to the present. All readers looking for a balanced, knowledgeable history will be richly rewarded with this clear and concise book.