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Mourning Through the Record of a Dying Body -Focusing on Jang Hon's “Gicheok(記慽)”-

  • The Research of the Korean Classic
  • 2025, (71), pp.5~32
  • Publisher : The Research Of The Korean Classic
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature > Korean Literature > Korean classic prose
  • Received : October 22, 2025
  • Accepted : November 20, 2025
  • Published : November 30, 2025

Soojin Kang 1

1경상국립대학교 경남문화연구원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Jang Hon, a commoner writer (yeohang munin) active in the 18th and 19th centuries, composed “Gicheok(記慽)” to mourn the death of his six-year-old grandson, Jeungheup, who passed away in 1807. A characteristic feature of “Gicheok” is that its content focuses more on recording the process of the grandson's dying than on expressing grief. This paper focuses on the fact that Jang Hon, in a text intended to mourn his prematurely deceased grandson, primarily recorded the process of the deceased's dying instead of expressing the sorrow of loss. The study aims to investigate why he chose this particular method of mourning. Jang Hon meticulously and realistically documented the material changes in his grandson's body from the onset of the illness to his death. This detailed record aimed to concretely evoke the author's painful experience of failing to treat his grandson suffering from smallpox and ultimately facing his death. He elaborately recorded the symptoms that appeared on his grandson, the types of medicine administered, the resulting effects, and the changes observed in his grandson's body from the point treatment was abandoned until his final moment. By thoroughly documenting his grandson's dying process, Jang Hon intended to return to the period when his grandson was ill and reflect upon his own failure to properly fulfill his role as the head of the family at the time. Furthermore, by recording the experience of losing his grandson on the last day of the year, the author sought to commemorate his grandson's final moments and, through this act, accept the reality of his loss. In essence, the author composed “Gicheok” with the intent to remember and mourn his grandson's death through the act of writing. To achieve this, he adopted the fundamental form of existing elegiac writings but restructured the content by introducing modifications. Jang Hon's “Gicheok” presents a new mode of mourning: one that utilizes the act of recording to evoke the memory of the deceased's dying body, thereby facilitating the acceptance of the sorrow of loss. Moreover, its significance lies in deviating from the conventional, abstract representation of the human process of death found in ritualistic elegies. By depicting this process realistically and concretely within the literary domain, it suggests a novel method for commemorating the deceased

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