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Geumo Shinwha (金鰲新話) and Secular Desires

  • Journal of Korean Literature
  • 2024, (49), pp.181-224
  • DOI : 10.52723/JKL.49.181
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature
  • Received : March 1, 2024
  • Accepted : May 10, 2024
  • Published : May 31, 2024

Yim, Ju Tak 1,  Myung, SuHyun 1,  Choi, Eun-hee 1,  Cui Yifan 1

1부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Despite controversy over its genre characteristics and the author’s creative intentions, Kim Si-seup (金時習)’s Geumo Shinhwa has widely been used as a textbook for the Korean language class in the secondary school. This study aims to newly understand the creative context and intentions of the work, which is still in the midst of many controversies, from a comparative literary perspective. It goes without saying that comparative studies between Que Koo (瞿佑)’s Jiandeng Xinhua (剪燈神話) and Asai Ryoi (浅井了意)’s Otogiboko (伽婢子) were also actively conducted from an early age. However, it was not noted that the creative context of the two books was in line with the situation of the era in which their status as governmental studies of the Cheng-Zhu school’s Confucianism was solidified, and that the context of the appearance of Chuanqi (Chinese) or Jeongi (Korean) (傳奇) genre was in line with the establishment of the Imperial Examination System. The appearance of the narrative genre during the Tang Dynasty is in line with the establishment of the Imperial Examination System, which allowed all the members of the shi or sa (士) class, the ruling class of the local community, to participate in the world-wide state and at the same time allowed them to achieve secular desires such as wealth and glory. A human being who pursued secular desires but could control those desires by him/herself, that was an image of talent who wanted to be selected through the examination system. The narrative genre served as samples to present various ways to accomplish secular desires beautifully and control, even give up them. Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and the old and new poetry and song often used in the genre, were devices designed for hero and heroine to control and restrain secular desires by themselves. However, as the Cheng-Zhu school’s Neo-Confucianism, which aimed at the morality similar to that of the Puritanism, became a government school, the general perception of intellectuals during the Tang Dynasty, which allowed secular desires but made them control by themselves, gradually declined. Both two novels were created at a time when the Cheng-Zhu school’s Confucianism established its status as the central government school of each country. It is inevitable to allow all secular desires while maintaining the examination system. Rather, it may be more practical to pursue secular desires in a variety of environments but to show various ways to self-control themselves as pieces of the narrative genre suggests. This is because secular desires cannot and should not be fundamentally blocked. The creation of the works by the two authors was closely related to the intention to show the practical utility of the genre against the trend of blocking even the discourse of secular desires in accordance with the despotism of the Cheng-Zhu school’s Confucianism. In this regard, it could be seen that Kim Si-seup’s making Geumo Shinwha was also carried out in a similar context to the context in which the two books were issued in China and Japan. Thus, this study forms a hypothesis by integrating two previous readings; reading centered on the problem of desire and reading judging the work as a counter-discourse against the Cheng-Zhu school’s Confucianism, and tries to verify it true through reading the texts in the socio-historical context of the appearance of the genre.

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