A Comparative Study of Korean Literature (eBook)

Sangjin Park received his PhD from the University of Oxford and served as Visiting Professor at Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. He is now Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Busan University of Foreign Studies, Korea, and the author of Semiotics and Theory of Openness (English) and Reading Dante’s Comedy: Universality of Classic and Sensibility to the Other (Korean) among others. Recently he translated Dante’s Comedy and Boccaccio’s Decameron with introduction and notes. He is preparing books on Dante and Comparative Literature.

Acknowledgments 6
Contents 8
Chapter 1: Introduction 10
1 Openness 10
2 Universality 15
3 The Consciousness of Comparative Literature 18
4 Chapter 2. The Condition of “East Asia” Discourse: Thought and Practice of De-homogenization 18
5 Chapter 3. Porous Modernity: Overcoming Modernity in the Age of Globalization 19
6 Chapter 4. The World of Circulation: The Universality of Literary Value in the Guunmong 20
7 Chapter 5. The Literary Values of Sin Ch‘ae-­ho’s Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of the Canon 21
8 Chapter 6. National Language Beyond Nation-­States: Vernacular Literary Language in Yi Kwang-Su 22
9 Chapter 7. Literature as Sensibility to the Other: Dante in Modern Korean Literature 23
Notes 24
Chapter 2: The Condition of “East Asia” Discourse: The Concept and Practice of De-homogenization 25
1 Premise 25
2 Reflection 28
2.1 Reconsideration of the Concept of Othering 28
2.2 A Historical Overview of East Asia Discourse 30
3 Research 33
3.1 The Concept of De-homogenization 33
3.1.1 Resistance 33
3.1.2 Self-Negation 36
3.2 The Practice of De-homogenization 38
4 The Task 43
Notes 45
Chapter 3: Porous Modernity: Overcoming Modernity in the Age of Globalization 52
1 Introduction 52
2 The Process of Modernization in Korea 53
3 Overcoming Modernity in Korea: Porous Modernity 56
4 Toward Porous Modernity 58
5 The Ethicality of Thought 60
Notes 62
Chapter 4: The World of Circulation: The Universality of Literary Value in the Guunmong 64
1 Literary Value 64
2 The Structure of Circulation 67
2.1 The Guunmong 67
2.2 The Effects of Folding 67
2.3 The Transcendental and Non-transcendental Worlds 69
2.4 The Openness of the Text 71
3 The Workings of Circulation 74
3.1 Historical and Social Similarities 74
3.2 Harmony 75
3.3 Ambivalence 76
3.4 Inclusion and Relativity 79
4 Literary Salvation 82
Notes 83
Chapter 5: The Literary Value of Sin Ch‘ae-Ho’s Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante’s Comedy 93
1 Translation and World Literature 93
2 A Way of Re-evaluating the Writer Sin Ch‘ae-ho 97
3 Reading Dream Sky 99
3.1 Dream Sky and the Divine Comedy 99
3.2 Metamorphosis: The Harmony of Phantasmagoria and Reality 104
3.3 The Country of Nim: The Structure of Sin Ch‘ae-ho’s World 108
3.4 Power and Struggle 112
3.5 Allegory 116
4 The Horizon of Marginal Alteration 118
Notes 120
Chapter 6: National Language Beyond Nation-States: Cosmopolitan Vernacular Literary Language in Yi Kwang-Su 126
1 The Problem of Yi Kwang-Su 126
2 Vernacularization 128
3 The Idea of Literature 132
4 The Triumph of Vernaculars: Literature 136
Notes 138
Chapter 7: Literature as Sensibility to the Other: Dante in Modern Korean Literature 140
1 Universality of the Classic Literary Text 140
2 How Did Modern Korean Literature Cope with Dante? 145
2.1 Historical Survey 145
2.2 Alteration of Dante 149
2.2.1 Reception and Alteration 149
2.2.2 The Problem of the Translation of “Comedy” 151
3 Dante and Literature 153
4 Literature and Modernity 159
Notes 162
Bibliography 167
Index 177