This study is to analyse the poetic circle of Hunanseolhun, a woman poet who cultivated Chinese poetry written about women's life in middle Joseon Period according to themes to understand her conscious world. It also identifies techniques of her repre...
This study is to analyse the poetic circle of Hunanseolhun, a woman poet who cultivated Chinese poetry written about women's life in middle Joseon Period according to themes to understand her conscious world. It also identifies techniques of her representative aesthetics with integrity to understand her personal aspects in her Chinese poetry.
Hunanseolhun was notable as a woman Chinese poet in the 16th century of Joseon Period. So, her poetry was internationally famous enough to be published in China and Japan though few poems written by women were published at that time.
The space for women in Joseon Period was closed in which they were closed by families and had to have various sufferings. And women's writing poetry was considered negative by society. It was considered good that women respected ancestors and lived for others such as husbands and children.
However, Hunanseolhun began writing poetry early under good environment for studying and with native sensitivity though she was a woman. She wrote a poem named < Gwanghanjeonbaekokrusangryangmun >, which surprised many people. She, who had native talent in writing poetry, left about 210 poems. Although she wrote many poems, only a few have been stored at her parents' home and memorized by her brother, Hu Gyun, which were collected and edited later. Her poetry was organized and edited by Hu Gyun in 1590 when she was dead. Then in 1600, Oh Myeong-je who was an envoy of Myeong published a collection of poetry named < Joseonsiseon > with a help from Hu Gyun and introduced to China. In 1606, it was published again in Joseon, named < Nanseolhunjip >.
Her poetic world was categorized into three parts. Of course, her poetry focused on constant missing, love, frustration and renunciation. However, her frustration and sorrow are represented as sometimes blood ties, sometimes surreal world, deep interest in society or historical mind. Her poetry is categorized differently according to types to understand her poetry as follows : hopeful mind toward love, internal conflicts, ideal messages in dream world, inconsistent minds, social conflicts and disclosure of defects through parody. In other words, the first theme we meet in her poetry is love. She had illusion and hope toward love because love could not be expressed at that time. However, love was constant waiting, frustration, renunciation and sadness. So she intended to find desire of love from Taoist hermits' world. That is she dreamed a free love.
Her poetry on Taoist hermit dreamed self-esteem of women and the society in which poets are respected, but could not save herself because of real suffering. She expressed many unreasonable conflicts of her society through parody. She criticized social conflicts, warned of hypocritical and corrupted men's world, expressed sympathy to the public, and sadness of court ladies who had to live only for a king since they came to the court.
Hunanseolhun expressed her emotion indirectly in her poetry. It was aesthetics of hiding that her emotion is covered by natural things. Such technique left sensation and heartbreaking to readers. She represented abstract views such as view of life and art, and aesthetics of art through things specifically. She contrasted personalized things vividly to express internal emotion powerfully, which was an aesthetic method to express themes of her poetry effectively. Then, she used images for expression. She pursued audio-visual beauty using languages of emotion and colors. Therefore, as a means to configure images of poetry, she used languages of emotion, which sound sympathetic and miserable. Also she gave picturesque beauty to her poetry with a use of languages of colors. Such images are represented as artistic, reflecting aesthetic trend. She also used illusional words of achromatic colors, which reveals various harmonies of colors through contrasts with chromatic colors. Her pursuing for picturesque world expanded visual angle and space infinitely, which shows images of paintings. Hunanseolhun wrote significant and creative poetry through ancient history. Specifically, the technique was frequently used to express meanings of sentences significantly and symbolically. As she had abundant knowledge through much reading, she used ancient history circularly to express the conditions that she could not tell real conditions directly or when she talked about conflicts of society. It was intended because she could express many implications by short words and sentences.
Then, to examine her literary status in Chinese poetry, her poetry was published as the first woman's collection in Joseon period. So it is said that she was a pioneer of poetry on Women's Quarters. One or two pieces written by women were published at that time and then Hunanseolhun's poetry was collected and published as a book. It was a great turning point in Chinese poetry on women's quarters as Korean literary history accepted characteristics of literature on women's quarters. In particular, she expressed true emotion through many aesthetic techniques rather than poetry filtered by Confucian norms, which promoted the quality of writing.
She lived to be 27, which was very short. However, she is a great poet who can not be replaced by any other poet in consideration of content, types, thoughts and minds of her poetry.