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Abstract
The study offers a close look at the sections in Kim Sisŭp’s collected works entitled “Writing” and “Books and Drawings”, which contain poems on artistic creativity and aesthetic thought. In these, Kim Sisŭp tries to voice his ideas concerning the process of creating a work, the relation between painting, calligraphy, writing and a song and describes his views on how to address a person’s senses through the appropriate means. The study deals also with other issues regarding features of the poet’s views on artistic works/texts being created and perceived, all considered within the context of Korean and more general East Asian literature. Kim Sisŭp’s view on literature is discussed together with a wealth of material on the same topic by other Korean authors of the Koryŏ and Chosŏn eras.
Abstract
As one of the Six Surviving Subjects (saengyuksin), Kim Sisŭp has long been identified with loyalism, but such a multifaceted figure resists reduction to a single label. This chapter examines the construction of Kim Sisŭp’s memory as a loyalist figure during the Chosŏn period, one which coalesced only gradually over the centuries after his death. By dissecting the process of Kim’s elevation, it teases out critical aspects of early Chosŏn political culture, in particular the shifting ground between Confucian moral ideals and the authority of Korean kingship, as well as the domination of the sarim-centered narratives in the historiography of early Chosŏn history. They point to how the Chosŏn past has been filtered by the agendas of historical actors that framed political conflict in moral terms. The result was in a historical record that is less documentary than recursive—that is to say, how historical memory became site of repeated revisionism is what explains Kim Sisŭp’s eventual apotheosis as an exemplary loyalist.
Abstract
The classification of Kŭmo sinhwa (New Tales of the Golden Turtle) has varied across the centuries. It has been classified as an anecdote, dream prose, considered an adaptation, e.g., of Qu You’s novel ‘New Tales while Trimming the Wick’, the first Korean entertainment prose, allegory, novel focused on critical realism, etc. Nevertheless, there are distinct elements connecting Kim Sisŭp’s work with the mongyurok (dream novel) genre which similarly appeared during the early Chosŏn era. This study analyses the relevant stories of Kŭmo sinhwa and the representative texts of the dream novel genre from various perspectives concerning stereotyping, as, e.g., the request on the protagonist-narrator and characters he meets in his dream; the narrative strategy; the reality-dream-reality structure and its apparent irrationality; the dream scenery and the listing of its inhabitants. The study focuses on the two prototypes of the dream and its representatives, as well as dream discussions together with certain similarities as for example the impossibility of the transmission of the dream world’ ideals into reality, i.e., the crucial discrepancy out of which the genre of dream novel was born.
Abstract
Kim Sisŭp lived during two of the most momentous intellectual changes in Korea prior to the turn of the twentieth century. One was the invention of the Korean alphabet in the middle of the fifteenth century, something that posed a fundamental challenge to elite conceptions of literacy. Opposition to the development of the alphabet among sections of the elite inadvertently revealed the second great intellectual change that influenced Kim’s life and how he would be remembered in the centuries following his death: the ascendancy of Neo-Confucianism. The bellicose view that Buddhism was anathema to civilization grew ever stronger in the centuries following Kim’s death. This paper begins by examining Kim Sisŭp’s relationship with a close friend before turning to the complexities in how others would relate to him and his memory in the following centuries.
Abstract
Daoist thought and texts form one of the least explored parts of Kim Sisŭp’s multifaceted oeuvre. This paper aims to find a critical perspective on the relationship that Kim Sisŭp’s writings on Daoist subjects might have with various cultural traditions (e.g., cosmology, Daoist internal alchemy, Neo-Confucianism) during his time as well as previous and later eras. The tasks of this paper include identifying the sources of his knowledge (e.g., Daoist writings such as the Daoist canon) and considering it in the cultural context of his time (e.g., practices and documents in official or private spheres). Furthermore, we will examine his attitudes (e.g., reception, criticism, appropriation, distinction or rejection) towards these subjects and practices. The study further examines Kim Sisŭp’s place in various genealogies of Korean Daoist and his role in the transmission of various parts of the Daoist discourse with the context of the Korean environment of the fifteenth and sixteenth century.
Abstract
Kim Sisŭp has been traditionally understood as a moralistic and erudite Confucian scholar, but few studies focus on his theoretical achievements in the Korean Learning of the Way. The aim of this study is to analyze the surprisingly large number of Kim Sisŭp’s texts on crucial points of the Confucian philosophical discourse, namely li and qi and other related concepts including taiji, human nature etc. A survey of his crucial texts on such theoretical problems will enable us to describe with precision Kim Sisŭp’s views on the theoretical foundations of Confucian discourse and his place within the development of Korean Confucian philosophy. In a broad sense, this study also contributes to a better understanding of the precise character of fifteenth-century Confucian discourse.
Abstract
Kim Sisŭp is one of the Confucian scholars turned Buddhist monk and perpetual wanderer, yet without entirely abandoning Confucianism and its teachings. This paper explores the ideology behind and the purpose of his eremitism, claiming that it is programmatic and singular in its type, a combination of two diverging ideas: the Mencian idea of a Confucian scholar’s morally justified disengagement from serving the state, against the idea of unconditional loyalism promoted by the Song scholars. This paper claims that the ideological basis of Kim Sisŭp’s retirement in protest is his moral philosophy, centered around the idea of righteousness and just conduct (yili/ŭiri