[KS] Please help me find citations and resources for the concept of 정 (jeong), thank you.

Javier Cha javiercha at gmail.com
Thu Nov 17 03:15:30 EST 2011


In my view, the twentieth-century appropriation of 'jeong' as a native
Korean 'value' (I am not exactly sure *what* 'jeong' is but it is one
those quintessential 'things' that is strongly associated with what it
means to be 'Korean') is a reconstitution of an early modern notion
that has little to do with 'jeong' in the Four-Seven Debate (although
both notions of 'jeong' derive from the same conceptual genealogy
outlined by Isabelle).  It seems to originate from the cult of 'qing'
('jeong' in Chinese) in early modern Jiangnan following the breakdown
of neoclassical/Neo-Confucian epistemology in the 17th century.  This
late Ming literary-intellectual wave defined the shared culture of the
Lower Yangzi, possibly Beijing, and certainly Seoul starting from the
eighteenth century.

I have not invested enough thought into explaining jeong/qing to a
non-East Asia specialist at this point, but a good place to begin
would be the masterworks of early modern Chinese fiction, including
the Romance of Three Kingdoms (which needless to say continues to
enjoy enormous popularity in South Korea) and Feng Menglong's
three-volume collection of short stories (all of which have been
lucidly translated by Yang Shuhui):
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Old-Ming-Dynasty-Collection/dp/0295978449

강명관, 공안파와 조선후기 한문학 provides a detailed, if a bit technical, look at
the interactions between late Ming literary culture and the blossoming
of a new court culture in eighteenth-century Seoul.

A stray thought: it would be interesting to explore 'jeong' as the
native antithesis of Western rationalism in the process of Korea's
modernization in the twentieth century.

Javier




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