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A Couple’s Memories about the Life of a Local Intellectual during the Latter Half of Joseon - Nobutan by Mrs. Kim of Suncheon and Dapbusa by Kim Yak-ryeon

  • The Studies in Korean Poetry and Culture
  • Abbr : Korean Poetry and Culture
  • 2018, (42), pp.185-212
  • Publisher : The Society of Korean Poetry and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature
  • Received : July 15, 2018
  • Accepted : August 15, 2018

Lee, sang-won 1

1조선대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an analytical examination into the first response songs between a couple, Nobutan and Dapbusa, whose authors are Mrs. Kim of Suncheon and Kim Yak-ryeon showed differences in their memories of their life and the ways that they embodied them in a literary fashion even though they were a couple. In Nobutan, the old lady Mrs. Kim of Suncheon depicts his life in sighs as the title means “an old lady’s sighs.” The content of this work, however, focuses on how she took care of her husband in his state exam and managed the household affairs around it. This work is thus located between Jatangas, which is about wives’ lamentation about their misfortunes, and Bokseonhwaeumga, which is an altered Gyenyeoga focused on the management of household affairs among women’s roles, in the category of women’s quarters Gasas. Dapbusa is Kim Yak-ryeon's response song to his wife’s Nobutan. It focuses on his ostentation of his life as a man based on the model of Namaga, which is an integration of dreams and desires among the upper-class men during Joseon. It inherits the tradition of Namaga in its entire framework but shows many differences from it in its details. Unlike Namaga, which emphasizes exciting play, pleasure, and splendid office life, it reduces this content considerably and instead expands the content about his life after resignation, which comes at the end briefly, heavily. In fact, the content about his life after resignation accounts for more than a half of the pages. These differences between Nobutan and Dapbusa derive from differences in memories and cultural conventions between husband and wife. The differences in conventions between women’s quarters Gasas as part of women’s literature and Namaga as part of men's literature are eventually attributable to actual life differences between men and women.

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.