The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Choson Korea

by Hwisang Cho, Clark W. Sorensen (Editor)

Overview

Finalist for the inaugural ACLS Open Access Book Prize

Honorable Mention, 2022 James B. Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies (AAS)

Honorable Mention, 28th Annual Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book (MLA)

Shortlisted for the 2021 George A. and Jeanne S. DeLong Book History Book Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP)

How a letter-writing revolution facilitated social change in premodern Korea

The invention of an easily learned Korean alphabet in the mid-fifteenth century sparked an “epistolary revolution” in the following century as letter writing became an indispensable daily practice for elite men and women alike. The amount of correspondence increased exponentially as new epistolary networks were built among scholars and within families, and written culture created room for appropriation and subversion by those who joined epistolary practices.

Focusing on the ways that written culture interacts with philosophical, social, and political changes, The Power of the Brush examines the social effects of these changes and adds a Korean perspective to the evolving international discourse on the materiality of texts. It demonstrates how innovative uses of letters and the appropriation of letter-writing practices empowered elite cultural, social, and political minority groups: Confucians who did not have access to the advanced scholarship of China; women who were excluded from the male-dominated literary culture, which used Chinese script; and provincial literati, who were marginalized from court politics. New modes of reading and writing that were developed in letter writing precipitated changes in scholarly methodology, social interactions, and political mobilization. Even today, remnants of these traditional epistolary practices endure in media and political culture, reverberating in new communications technologies.

The Power of the Brush is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of Emory University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

DOI 10.6069/9780295747828

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295747811
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	12/15/2020
Series:	Korean Studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hwisang Cho is assistant professor of Korean studies at Emory University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Note on Romanized Terms xiii

Prologue: A Story of Letter Writing in Twenty-First-Century Korea 3

1 Letter Writing in Korean Written Culture 10

2 The Rise and Fall of a Spatial Genre 36

3 Letters in the Korean Neo-Confucian Tradition 72

4 Epistolary Practices and Textual Culture in the Academy Movement 99

5 Social Epistolary Genres and Political News 128

6 Contentious Performances in Political Epistolary Practices 145

Epilogue: Legacies of the Choson Epistolary Practices 182

Glossary 195

Notes 213

Bibliography 239

Index 263

What People are Saying About This

Ross King

"An entirely original contribution that demonstrates that what seems to us moderns a seemingly marginal or trivial topic (letters) was actually central to much of political and intellectual life in Chosŏn Korea, distinguishing the Korean Neo-Confucian tradition from that of China."

Antje Richter

"Assembles a broad spectrum of political acts and situations in which letters, in the broadest sense of the word, were employed by the ‘powerless’—mostly women, Confucian scholars, and provincial scholars—to advocate certain political goals."

Editorial Reviews

"This book, with its rich content and detailed historical information, discusses the social and political situation of Chosŏn Korea in terms of epistolary practice and thereby provides a new window into Korean culture."

Religious Studies Review

"Hwisang Cho's book is a welcome addition to a nascent body of English-language scholarship on the study of Korean letters and provides vital insight into how epistolary practice in sixteenth-century Chosŏn spurred sociocultural and political change."

Acta Koreana

"The Power of the Brush further enriches the understanding of Chosŏn elite’s political epistolary writing…[O]ur understanding of premodern Korean humanities would be incomplete without this book."

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

"Well illustrated with relevant examples of letters, and including helpful tabulations, this study covers an enormous range of historical and political experience, bravely attempting to compare Korean and other societies’ letter writers, as well as the persistence of letter petitions in modern South Korea."

Journal of Asian Studies

"Through the lens of epistolary practice, The Power of the Brush revisits many important issues required for a critical understanding of late Choson society."

The Seoul Journal of Korean Studies