Description
Book SynopsisSi Nae Park examines how the culture of Chosŏn Seoul gave rise to a new vernacular literary form (
yadam), anonymously and unofficially circulating tales. She focuses on the collection
Repeatedly Recited Stories of the East, which was written in a new medium in which Literary Sinitic is hybridized with the vernacular realities of Chosŏn society.
Trade ReviewPark’s research into No’s linguistic-literary experimentation opens a new path for understanding the multilayered diglossia in Chosŏn literature. It also helps us reflect on issues in Korea today, such as Seoul-centrism, social mobility, and wealth and status. I feel that this, the first monographic work on
yadam in a Western language, will appeal not only to specialists of premodern Korea, but to a wide range of readers as well. -- Jeongsoo Shin * Journal of Asian Studies *
Si Nae Park’s
The Korean Vernacular Story: Telling Tales of Contemporary Choson in Sinographic Writing offers a new look at the intriguing classical literary genre of
yadam. Her thorough study of the late eighteenth-century collection known as
Dongpae naksong, or
Repeatedly Recited Stories of the East, compiled by No Myeongheum, casts light on the formation and significance of the
yadam genre in the literary history of the Joseon period. -- Charles La Shure * Seoul Journal of Korean Studies *
[An] impressively-researched book . . .
The Korean Vernacular Story will not only appeal to scholars (there is much here that is analytical and scholarly) but to anyone interested in finding out about Asian writing which is not Chinese or Japanese. * Asian Review of Books *
In
The Korean Vernacular Story, Park unfurls a sparkling canvas of eighteenth-century Chosŏn Korea, where new forms of the written vernacular, social mobility, literary sociability—both Seoul- and Beijing-centered metageographies—and vernacular temporalities intersect. A remarkable intervention in Korean studies with crucial implications for the study of East Asia’s Sinographic literatures. -- Wiebke Denecke, author of
Classical World Literatures: Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman ComparisonsThe major project in Korean cultural history is to recapture Korea’s hidden vernacular past in the forest of “Chinese” writing by Koreans. Si Nae Park’s reading of the hitherto neglected
yadam genre does exactly this, bringing these voices from Chosŏn Korea to life in their original earthy splendor. -- John Whitman, author of
Korean: A Linguistic IntroductionIn this valuable study of
yadam, Si Nae Park deftly handles the tensions between the oral and contemporary origins of the tales and the Sinitic script in which they are inscribed. Park has made a subtle, significant, and lasting contribution to an emerging but important field—the study of vernacularization in East Asia. -- Peter Kornicki, University of Cambridge
The Korean Vernacular Story is a meticulous and compelling reassessment of the emergence of
yadam, elaborated through No Myŏnghŭm’s compilation of real-world stories in highly vernacularized Sinitic. This insightful study demonstrates how premodern Korea, its culture increasing influenced by women, came to appreciate and readily circulate stories about itself. -- Sunglim Kim, author of
Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets:The Culture of Objects in Late Chosŏn Korean ArtThe first full-length examination of the
yadam genre,
The Korean Vernacular Story examines the literary and social milieu in late Chosŏn Seoul. Using meticulous research, Park forms arguments that will certainly serve as the foundation for further research. -- Michael J. Pettid, coeditor of
Premodern Korean Literary ProseA rethinking of vernacularity in late Chosŏn, free from modernist assumptions about the relationship between language and text. -- Sixiang Wang * Journal of Korean Studies *
Park’s achievement does not lie merely in her nuanced historicization of the rise of the literary vernacular in eighteenth-century Chosŏn Korea. Her book also powerfully foregrounds the intricacy of the cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamics in a larger sinographic world. . . This is a must-read book for anyone who is interested in Chosŏn literary history and manuscript culture, early modern East Asian literature, and literary Sinitic and local vernaculars in the sinographic world. -- Suyoung Son * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *
The Korean Vernacular Story is indispensable for all scholars dealing with questions of Korean language, literature, or pre-modern societal structures. Furthermore, this book about the telling of stories is itself a wonderful story and, in fact, a delightful read. -- Vladimir Glomb * Acta Koreana *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
A Note to the Reader
Introduction
1. The Compiler: A Marginalized
Yangban at the Center of the Chosŏn Cultural Scene
2. The Narrative World: A Window Into the Zeitgeist of Contemporary Chosŏn at Large
3. The Language: Articulating in the Language of the Here and Now
4. The Text in Motion: The Circulation of the
Tongp’ae naksong and the Rise of
Yadam in the Chosŏn Manuscript Context
Coda
Appendix A: The Original Text and Translation of “The Biography of No, the Clumsy Old Man”
Appendix B: A Translation of “The Story of a Slave Girl from Chirye”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
