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The change in the disease representation after two great war in Joseon: the case of Jo Kyeong

  • Journal of Korean Literature
  • 2016, (33), pp.95-120
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature
  • Published : May 31, 2016

Kim Hara 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study suggests elucidation about one aspect of Jo Kyeong趙絅’s literature, which tells significant reference to the experience of human disease, by making an analysis of his proses written in the position as a government official. There are constant descriptions of personal difficulties caused by serious disease, especially in Jo Kyeong’s petitions for resignation. Although written as official documents to the ruling King of Joseon朝鮮, we can find detailed case histories of Jo Kyeong and his stepmother in these elaborated proses. This kind of articles used to have regular patterns in rhetorics, which would not demonstrate one’s real physical status of health and could be under some suspicion of malingering to conceal one’s privacy. Jo Kyeong’s analytic narrative mode about disease is substantially different his senior government officials’ before two great war in Joseon. Influenced by widespread personal medical writing style of the time, one’s almost grotesque description forms a striking contrast to the other’s euphemism. Jo Kyeong and his contemporaries experienced wars and the physical sufferings that accompanies the war. Their experiences involves both the intensified recognition and expressions about their own body and disease, in public realm. Jo Kyeong’s petitions for resignation shows the change in disease representation of late Joseon literature exponentially.

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