Words of Legends

Acta Koreana, 2022

Peter H. Lee sets the bar high for his anthology. Not only does he state that he wishes that readers perceive the works in the anthology as world literature (p. xxiv), he also promises to "cover all genres and forms written in classical (literary) Chinese and the vernacular Korean language (consisting of Late Middle Korean and Modern Korean)" (p. xxiii). Interestingly, the preface also explains that the anthology from 2017 is an amended version of an earlier anthology published 36 years ago by the University of Hawai'i Press in 1981, in which Lee himself claims that "fiction and oral literature were underrepresented" (p. xxiii). Let us see how Lee tries to meet his ambitious aims in the anthology under review.

The Pitt

Prepared for the November 2018 Stanford Conference, “Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America”

Acta Koreana, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 185-188, 2023

The multifaceted nature of the yadam JHQUH ³ZKLFK VSDQV D UDQJH RI XQRIÀFLDOO\ FLUFXODWLQJ VWRULHV UHFRUGV RI WKH PDUYHOORXV DQG MRNHV DQG DQHFGRWHV IURP &KRVʼnQ .RUHD³KDV ORQJ been a source of delight to readers, as well as a conundrum to scholars. Since the beginning RI PRGHUQ VFKRODUVKLS RQ .RUHDQ OLWHUDWXUH yadam KDYH UDUHO\ ÀW WKH SUHFRQFHLYHG FDWHJRULHV of the national literary canon, and in spite of their huge popularity among both pre-modern and modern readerships, they have not received the attention they deserve. Si Nae Park's book, The Korean Vernacular Story QRW RQO\ UHFWLÀHV WKLV EXW DOVR RSHQV D FRPSOHWHO\ QHZ DYHQXH IRU IXUWKHU VWXGLHV RI WKH ODQGVFDSH RI &KRVʼnQ ODQJXDJH DQG OLWHUDWXUH 7KH ERRN LV D detailed study of only one example of this genre, Tongp'ae naksong ᶡぇ⍋䃖 (Repeatedly Recited Stories of the East ZULWWHQ E\ 1R 0\ʼnQJKšP ⴗભⅭ (1713-75), but the conclusions drawn by Park are relevant for yadam OLWHUDWXUH DQG SUHPRGHUQ .RUHD WH[WXDO SUDFWLFHV DV D ZKROH The title of the book employs multiple play and allusion, similar to the yadam style itself. Inspired by Patrick Hanan's book The Chinese Vernacular Story, 1 it challenges the dominant WKHRU\ WKDW .RUHDQ YHUQDFXODU OLWHUDWXUH LV GHÀQHG E\ WH[WV ZULWWHQ LQ KDQJšO. The recent An Anthology of Traditional Korean Literature by Peter H. Lee (2017) presents, in the category of "Vernacular Fiction", only works written in this script, under the longstanding assumption WKDW /LWHUDU\ 6LQLWLF FDQQRW E\ GHÀQLWLRQ EH D SDUW RI WKH YHUQDFXODU 2 Park shows that, much

East Asian Society and Publishing, 2021

Early twentieth-century Korean publishing was undergirded by a twofold urgency: the construction of a new inscriptional culture premised on the telos of text production using the Korean writing system and the imperatives of the production of knowledge about Korea's past against colonial censorship and colonial episteme. This paper traces early twentieth-century reception of yadam texts from Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910). The paper first examines how the 'Syosyŏl' (쇼셜 小說) section of the Korean-language weekly Kyŏnghyang sinmun (Capital and Provinces Weekly, 1960.10.19-1910.12.30) integrated eighteen Chosŏn yadam textes in 1909 and next analyzes the rhetorical framing and orthographic materiality of several collections of tales from precolonial Korea in the 1910s and 1920s. These two reception moments formed a process of transcontextualization that authenticated tales of precolonial Korea as heritage tales, priming Korean co-nationals to romance Korea's precolonial past as an idyllic haven and a wellspring of national pride.

This paper critiques previous research about the relationship between speech and writing in East Asia in general, and in Korea in particular, with a view to two questions of terminology: how to refer to the complex ecology of spoken and written language in pre-20th century Korea, and how to refer to the broader East Asian cultural formation of which Korea was a part. Following the seminal work of Sheldon Pollock on the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis,’ the author proposes the term ‘Sinographic Cosmopolis’ for the regions of East Asia that used Literary Sinitic and sinographs, and presents arguments suggesting that the term ‘diglossia’ has little or no utility in discussing ecologies of speech and writing, whether in pre-modern Korea or in the broader Sinographic Cosmopolis.

S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, 2022

The Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City), compiled and written by Bak Jesang (363-418?) of Silla (57 BCE-935), is an ancient Korean testimony to the mytho-history of matriversal (maternally universal) Koreans. Reappeared in the 1980s, the Budoji unleashes the forgotten story of the (M)Other World. Its teaching of Magoism, the Way of the Creatrix, culminates in matricosmology, which magnetizes severed entities in the patriarchal mind and pieces them into the original whole. The Budoji offers a soteriological roadmap to the matriversal consciousness with which human individuals and societies may overcome the consequences of the two colossal tribulations of the human world: the consequential loss of an innate self-regulating ability caused by the eating of living beings for food and the patriarchal takeover of matriversal sovereignty. Ultimately, humans are summoned to the task of restoring a harmonic terrestrial sonic resonance, in alliance with the natural world, to the Cosmic Music (Sonic Numerology), the metamorphic force of the matriverse. The Budoji defines Korean identity as the People of the Creatrix who flowered, spread, and bequeathed the legacy of matriversal confederacies prior to the rise of patriarchy. The course of Korean mytho-history unveils the lineage of Mu (Shaman) Head Mothers, also known as Mountain Deities, for the period of seven millennia (from ca. 7199 BCE to the early 5 th century CE) and their socio-political-civilizational efforts to uphold matriversal sovereignty on the planet Earth.

Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in the World of Wen 文 Reading Sheldon Pollock from the Sinographic Cosmopolis, edited by Ross King, 2023