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A Study of the Poems on Fall by Jeong Hak-yeon and the Self-consciousness of a Poet Feeling Pathetic for Fall

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2014, (54), pp.189-222
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : July 8, 2014
  • Accepted : August 4, 2014

Chul- Hee Lee 1

1성균관대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This paper has examined the life and the consciousness of Jeong Hak-yeonas a writer with a view to figure out the process of his creation of a longpoem sequence with the scenery of fall as the main material. Jeong Hak-yeon actively kept company with the influential figures inHanyang (present Seoul) in order to help save his father Jeong Yak-yongliving in exile and, at the same time, accumulated his fame as a poet byshowing his skills of poem recitations in social get-togethers. After the deathof King Jeongjo and the following factional feuds between Sipa (時派) . on the side of the deceased monarch and Jeong Yak-yong . and theopposition Beokpa (벽派) lasting for a long period, the issue of rescuingJeong Yak-yong and promoting his comeback to politics long fettered the lifeof Jeong Hak-yeon during and after his father갽s 18 years of exile. Humanrelations he had elaborately established in the midst of power politics andsmoldering factional strife only aggravated his ill fate. What is worse, hisconflict with his own father who had long wished him to be a great scholarmade him experience further agony. At the old age of 60, he recollected his painful past and sang his heart-rending sorrows, which became the mainthemes of the poetry. Jeong Hak-yeon expressed his own self-consciousness in his own worktitled “Chusa (秋士),” literally meaning “a poet who feels pathetic for fall,”thus showing the true emotion of a poet by expressing his inner conflictsresulting from the disharmony with the real world and by frankly portrayinghis image as a frustrated intellect. Jeong expressed his consciousness as awriter with which had created his world of poem dotted with sorrowsthrough the portrayal of the autumn scenery. After the mid-18th century, recitations of poems with the theme of fallbecame popular among the literary circles of Hanyang and there emerged theself-consciousness of “Chusa.” As the intellectuals who had been marginalizedfrom the politics took a lion’s share of the literary community, theyexpressed their own identity and aesthetic attitude more frankly. And the longpoem sequence by Jeong Hak-yeon is at the height of the style.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.