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David R. McCann, Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. xiii + 185 pages. ISBN: 0-231-11947-X (paper); 0-231-11946-1 (cloth).
Reviewed by Robert Fouser
Kagoshima University[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 4 (2001): 167-169. Acta Koreana is published by Academia Koreana of Keimyung University.]
Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions is a stimulating but problematic addition to a slowly growing body of criticism of Korean literature in English. These two sides to the book are deeply intertwined and frequently jar readers, as if to test their alertness. For a work of literary criticism to be successful, however, it must work on three levels: content, organization, and writing. The content must be stimulating and soundly researched; the organization must be logical and comprehensive; and the writing must be persuasive and aesthetically pleasing. Few works of literary criticism achieve these things completely, but good and influential ones do. How well, then, does Early Korean Literature reach this ambitious standard?
Content: The most stimulating aspect of Early Korean Literature is the content. Running through the narrative is a strong emphasis on the social origins of specific literary works and the "literary culture" from which they emerged:
I have continued to find the concept of literary culture intriguing. It is a human ecosystem, with finite resources, patterns of use and distribution, tension between the haves and the have-nots; a monetary system, with discrete entities having certain values, where perhaps a little something in Korean might be exchanged for something else entirely in Chinese; but above all, a cultural system through which contending, competing, sometimes complementary forces interact (pp. 99-100).
The author uses this "literary culture" theory to discuss "negotiation" in the following works: Ch'ôyong and Manghae Temple, Songs of Dragons Flying to Heaven, and famous sijo by Chông Mong-ju, Yi Sun-sin, Hwang Chin-i, and Yun Sôn-do. The author describes negotiation in literature as follows: "Written works summarize and inscribe previous and ongoing negotiations about subjects or events that may or may not appear in them; they ascribe meanings to events and names; they claim the authority to produce and to be a written record." (p. xii) "Literary culture" thus emerges from the process of negotiation over the meaning of texts in society. This theory allows the author to focus on the political and social issues in the above works that links them to the historical and cultural context that informed their production. The result is a refreshing approach that leads to provocative observations such as the following regarding Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven:
The Song's complex mix of Chinese and Korean history, oral and written sources, Korean songs, and stories transformed into Chinese-language stanzas and annotations, embellished with Korean and Chinese signs and portents, does not easily lend itself to the modern teleological narratives of growth toward Korean cultural independence. It might, in fact, serve as a textbook example of the contradictions, tensions, and embattled tendencies referred to in the headnote to this chapter [emphasis in original] (p. 132).
One area of concern regarding the theory is the lack of reference to major theorists who work in this area. From different perspectives, Terry Eagleton, Arnold Hauser, and Edward Said on the Western tradition and Karatani Kojin and Stephen Owen on the East Asian tradition, to name but a few, have written influential works on the relationship between social origins and cultural production and, in particular, between literary culture and literary production. A closer link to these and other critics working on the social-origins genre of theory would have strengthened the author's argument.
Organization: Problems with the organization of the book start with the title. To those familiar with literature, a title with the word "early" indicates that the book focuses on the formative and early years of the given literary tradition. This is true in the West as it is in Asia. Thus, the term "early English literature," for example, would commonly refer to literature before Chaucer; "early Chinese literature" to pre-Tang literature or earlier periods, and "early Japanese literature" to pre-Kamakura literature. In the case of Early Korean Literature, the author uses the term "early" to refer to all of Korean literature from the formative years to the end of the nineteenth century. Though dividing literary history into distinct periods is often arbitrary, the author gives no reason for the classification of all pre-twentieth-century literature as "early." In the context of Korean literary history, the term "early" as used in this book is a misnomer that risks leaving readers with a distorted chronology of Korean literary history.
The book is divided into three sections: "A Brief History of Korean Literature to the Nineteenth Century," "Part 1: An Anthology of Korean Literature," and "Part 2: Negotiations in Korean Literature." At eleven pages, the brief history of Korean literature is indeed brief, which makes it difficult to provide adequate historical context for the discussions that follow. The organization of Part 1 is odd because the first section covers early myths and Koryô songs, but not hyangga (though a few appear in the myths presented) or poetry in classical Chinese. The second section covers early Chosôn-period literature with classical Chinese poems and prose dumped together at the end of the section into a category labeled "hanmun." The organization of the works in the anthology jumps from being chronological to being genre-based. More glaring, however, is the omission of fiction written in Korean and dramatic works. This would have been less problematic if the author had mentioned clearly that the anthology was a selection that is closely related to the issues discussed in the book. No such explanation was given, so the reader is left wondering whether the anthology is simply a cut-and-paste job of translations that the author had on hand. Only when readers get to the beginning of Part 2 do they get an explanation from the author regarding the selection of works for discussion:The three essays that comprise the second section of this book are not, I should say at the outset, a chronological study, although they do take their texts in a sequence that runs from the thirteenth-century Samguk yusa up to the seventeenth-century "Fisherman's Calendar" by Yun Sôn-do (p. 99).
Writing: The quality of writing in Early Korean Literature varies, but it is never very good. At its worst, it is obtuse and difficult to follow, as in the following excerpt from the beginning of the book:
Prior to the twentieth century, Korean literature included works written in the Korean language and also, because of Korea's close political and cultural association with China and the plain usefulness of the medium, in Chinese. Prior to the fifteenth-century promulgation of the Korean alphabet, Korean literary works were recorded either in Chinese translation or in various systems of Chinese characters used to represent the meanings, sounds, and grammatical markings of Korean (p. 1).
The above explanation of the history of writings systems is unsatisfactory. To readers who are familiar with Korean literature, the use of Korean terms for the different writing systems would have been helpful. To readers who do not know Korean and who are not familiar with Korean literature, the description, particularly the description of pre-hangûl Korean writing systems, lacks clarity and detail. The use of semi-colloquial phrases, such as "the plain usefulness of the medium," is also grating, particularly when dropped in the middle of woolly academic prose.
Because Early Korean Literature includes a number of translations, a fourth criterion must be added to the above three: the quality of the translations. Overall, the quality of the translations is high. They are faithful to the original and read well in English. At times, however, the translations are marred by the same formal-colloquial dissonance that appears in the author's original text, as in the following example from a dialogue between Master Hô (Hô Saeng) and the leader of a group of bandits in "The Story of Master Hô":[Master Hô] "Well, if you really mean that, then would it not be better for you to get married, build houses, do the farming, and stop being bandits? Your lives would be happy, you wouldn't be worried about going out and getting caught, and you would have food and clothing in plenty. Wouldn't that be wonderful?" (p. 89)
Taken together, Early Korean Literature presents a provocative theory of the role of "literary culture" in Korean literature from the late Koryô to the mid-Chosôn periods. It does what any good theory must do: explain phenomena. The problem for readers, however, particularly those who are not familiar with Korean literature, however, is that the theory is buried under so much disorganized and unclear writing. Readers can only hope that the author will let his theory breathe by working on a revised edition and by exploring the theory in subsequent research on other periods and genres of Korean literature.
Citation: Fouser, Robert J. 2001
Review of Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions, by David R. McCann, (2000)
Korean Studies Review 2001, no. 09
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr01-09.htm
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