[KS] cultural object circulation in the late Choson Dynasty query (Jamie Jungmin Yoo)

[Jamie Jungmin Yoo]

   Dear Professor Schmid and all,

First of all, thank you for brining this topic. I'm currently preparing 
for my dissertation on book circulations and production of literature, 
ex. hansi, in the 18th century. I'm in the beginning stage of my 
research and hope to learn from many other advanced scholars by sharing 
my idea.

For my research, I plan to consider these subtopics: (1) travel writings 
to Beijing, Yonhaengnok (???) for the book (and painting) acquisition 
records in Beijing, (2) distribution of poetry communities in Seoul, for 
tracking down the communication routes and their reading and sharing 
practices; for example, Park Chiwon groups and Yi Dokmu groups (3) 
social network analysis and GIS, as methodologies, in order to find any 
patterns and to map their communication modes, and (4) finally, paradigm 
shift and change of aesthetic taste of late Choson literati, if I can 
find any..

The reason I didn't include the market issue in this lineup is that, 
first of all, from my limited knowledge, I observe that informal and 
community level circulation/sharing was much more commonplace (and 
important) than commercial circulations, at least in the case of 
production of knowledge and book circulations. By the same token, 
manuscripts/handwriting practices played a quite bigger role than the 
government oriented printing business. This "fluidity" issue could be 
considered, of course, just as generic nature of textual 
production/transmission and also there would be much more complexity in 
the canon formation process, but I think local level sharing should be 
included in our consideration to picture the circulation practice of the 
18^th C.

Secondly, as Professor Ledyard mentioned, "trades" with China will be 
important. It looks like cultural boundaries between China and Korea 
were much more fluid (again), than political boundaries, or than modern 
ones drawn from our perspectives. I haven't found sufficient Yonhaengnok 
records which reveal exact prices for the items traded between Chinese 
and Korean during the yonhaeng, but still noticed "exchange" was 
commonplace, in various quite private unofficial levels.

For the resources, I've mostly consulted individual collections, Munjip, 
and Yonhaengnok records. I hope to learn more about this topic. I'm in 
the beginning stage of my study and feel rather puzzled to get an 
overall picture of the past.

Best Wishes,

Jamie Jungmin Yoo
Ph.D. candidate
Harvard University
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