KJCKorea
Journal Central

This article is designed to research the poetic mind and the literary thoughts of Seokjong Lee Jung-jik. He considered that everything be the subject matter of a poem from our moral nature to the chores of our daily life. As he regarded human nature as unchangeable, poems had to have something to do with human affairs and poets should write unchangeable poems that were not be influenced by the drift of the times. The characteristics of literary thoughts in his poetry are as follows. Firstly, Seokjong pursued the pure poetic mind of virtue and ampleness which was presented in poong-a of the ancient <Book of Poetry>. He tried to inherit the creative attitude of the Book of Poetry and to recover the tradition of lyric structure of poong-a. That was the old poem. Secondly, he believed that the poem was to be based on the pure and true ‘human nature’. Poetry should not gloss over the matter for the purpose of getting a certain worldly intention. Poem should not founded on the ‘sentiment’. He thought that it was not from an innate ability but form an incessant endeavor to achieve this sort of poetic creativity. Thirdly, as Seokjong got older, his method of writing poem was of statement or of discussion. This meant that he did not use metaphor or symbolic expression in his poem, but described things as they really were in a brief and an easy way. Finally, from the perspective of poetic history of the late Choson Dynasty, he was one of three prominent literary men in Cholla Province(Honam Region). This paper tried to explain where he was and what his literary works meant in the history of literature in the late Choson Dynasty. In the literary circles of Cholla Province in that period could be divided by two main streams, the one Seokjong group and the other Maechon(Hwang Hyun) group.

Natural emotion, the Book of Poetry, Nature, Poetic Statement, Discussion, Three prominent literary men in Honam Region