본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

A Study on Anecdote of Tumun-dong 72 Loyalists

  • Journal of Korean Literature
  • 2012, (25), pp.149-182
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature
  • Published : May 31, 2012

Hwang Jae-moon 1

1서울대학교 규장각한국학연구원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I observed the progress of rediscovering the story of Tumun-dong(杜門洞) 72 Loyalists and investigated the feature of accepting that story as a subject matters in the late Joseon dynasty. Tumun-dong 72 loyalists were said to be patriots for Koryo dynasty, and they were retired to hermitage in the remote mountain against new dynasty Joseon in the time of Koryo’s ruin. Their stories were reilluminated by King Youngjo of Joseon. He visited Gaesung, the capital of Koryo, in 1740, and heard the case of Tumun-dong 72 loyalists. And then he visited their retirement site, recited a poem for praising the loyalties with his 12 young subjects. Though it is possibile that this affair was an intentional or precalculated conduct, it is certain that the event by King Youngjo was a beginning of spreading the story in wide areas. Meanwhile, in Gaesung, tales about Tumun-dong 72 loyalists were handed down in the form of oral literature before 1740. It could be presumed that tales handed down in Gaesung area had been some different versions. But some of them had been excluded or denied by the editors of town chronicles, and probably intentionally. So anecdotes published in town chronicles are characterized as a loyalist story admitted in Joseon dynasty, because the excluded motif in these case were tragic death forced by meritorious retainers at the founding of Joseon dynasty. In the case of poems, anecdotes about Tumun-dong 72 loyalists were described as a symbol of peaceful retirement or noble fidelity. In some poems 72 loyalists were compared with Baiyi(伯夷) and Shuqi(叔齊), symbolical recluses and loyalties in premodern east asian culture, but in those works their death had not been mentioned. So tragic factors expressed some versions handed down in Gaesung area were not expressed in those poems.

Statistics

  • 459 Viewed
  • 126 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

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.
Basic Search Advanced Search