@article{ART003398892},
author={HYE-KYU KANG},
title={Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead},
journal={인문논총 },
issn={2005-6222},
year={2026},
volume={71},
pages={23-46}
TY - JOUR
AU - HYE-KYU KANG
TI - Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead
JO - 인문논총
PY - 2026
VL - 71
IS - null
PB - Institute for Human studies, Kyungnam University
SP - 23
EP - 46
SN - 2005-6222
AB - This article rereads the story of the ghost of the widow Ahn (安氏) in Eou yadam (於于野譚).
Departing from readings that treat her food demands as an eruption of repressed desire or her ghost as the figure of an unruly female other, it examines within which frameworks the narrative handles her demands and how those responses fail. Ahn was a childless widow who had taken her nephew into her own house, and from the early Joseon period to the seventeenth century, responsibility for the rites of a married aunt who died without heirs was unsettled between her husband’s line and her natal family. Her ghost’s demands begin with a lavish meal and escalate to flower cakes, daily delicacies, violence, and a request for a farewell feast, ending in plunder by a band of hungry ghosts and the ruin of the house. The farewell feast (餞別), the only attempt in the narrative to close the relationship, fails because it borrows the form of a send-off among the living and thus grants the dead no recurring place in ritual. In the adjacent tale of the state rite in the northern outskirts, the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth obtains a spirit tablet by stating the grounds of her exclusion, while three other food-demanding ghosts become targets of extermination or expulsion within frames of exchange, kinship, or hospitality. Ahn’s ghost, by contrast, passes through the frames of kinship, hospitality, and farewell without settling in any of them. The story thus raises the question of who must meet the demands of a dead relative who is not a direct ancestor, to what extent, and how such a relationship can be ended.
KW - hungry ghost (乞鬼);female ghost narratives;kinship ancestral rites;farewell feast (餞別);Eou yadam
DO -
UR -
ER -
HYE-KYU KANG. (2026). Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead. 인문논총 , 71, 23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG. 2026, "Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead", 인문논총 , vol.71, pp.23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG "Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead" 인문논총 71 pp.23-46 (2026) : 23.
HYE-KYU KANG. Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead. 2026; 71 23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG. "Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead" 인문논총 71(2026) : 23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG. Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead. 인문논총 , 71, 23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG. Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead. 인문논총 . 2026; 71 23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG. Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead. 2026; 71 23-46.
HYE-KYU KANG. "Food Demands of the Widow Ahn’s Ghost in Eou yadam and the Boundary between Kinship Ancestral Rites and the State Rite for the Unattended Dead" 인문논총 71(2026) : 23-46.
