This book contains 175 tales drawn equally from the ancient and modern periods of Korea, plus 16 further tales provided for comparative purposes. Nothing else on this scale or depth is available in any western language. Three broad classes of material are included: foundation myths of ancient states and clans, ancient folktales and legends, modern … [Read More]
Booklist: Pre-modern texts - fiction and poetry (page 3)
Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions
From the publisher’s website: Preeminent scholar and translator David R. McCann presents an anthology of his own translations of works ranging across the major genres and authors of Korean writing—stories, legends, poems, historical vignettes, and other works—and a set of critical essays on major themes. A brief history of traditional Korean literature orients the reader … [Read More]
The Record of the Black Dragon Year
From the publisher’s website: The Imjin nok, or Record of the Black Dragon Year, is the first popular tale inspired by the Japanese invasion of Korea between 1592 and 1598. As a collection of folk narratives clustered around major events and characters, it exists in some forty manuscript and printed versions, long and short, in … [Read More]
The Bamboo Grove: An Introduction to Sijo
From the publisher’s website: Series: Ann Arbor Paperbacks The sijo is the most popular and most Korean of all traditional Korean poetic forms, originating with the old songs of the Hyangka of the Sylla Empire (668-936) and the prose songs of the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392). Sometimes likened to haiku for its brevity, a typical sijo poem follows … [Read More]
The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese
From the publisher’s website: Unlike poetry written in the vernacular, classical Korean poetry was heavily influenced by the great poets of the Tang and Sung dynasties and was written in Chinese, while reflecting a perspective which was uniquely Korean. This is the first and only comprehensive anthology of classical Korean poetry to appear in English. … [Read More]
Songs of the Kisaeng
Original Korean poems, written during the 16th and 17th centuries, and contemporary English translations. The original BOA Editions publication is now hard to find. Apparently however it is available as an eBook from LTI Korea. According to their website: This e-book was made by scanning and converting the original book using OCR software. We have … [Read More]
Singing Like a Cricket, Hooting Like an Owl
From the publisher’s website: Kyu-bo Yi (1168–1241), the greatest of the classical Korean poets, was born into a very turbulent period of history, when the Koryo kingdom was threatened from the north by barbarians and from within by the ongoing struggle for supremacy among the various factions. His poems, confessional and transcendent, describe moments of … [Read More]
Classical Korean Poetry
From the publisher’s website: Introduced and Translated by Jaihiun Kim The 600 verses presented in this anthology will provide the reader with comprehensive and varied aspects of the sijo, the traditional Korean lyric, since its emergence as a fixed literary form as early as the late 12th century down to the 19th century. [Read More]
The Korean Singer of Tales
Publisher description: P’ansori, the traditional oral narrative of Korea, is sung by a highly trained soloist to the accompaniment of complex drumming. The singer both narrates the story and dramatizes all the characters, male and female. Performances require as long as six hours and make extraordinary vocal demands. In the first book-length treatment in English … [Read More]
Tilting the jar, spilling the moon: poems from Koryo, Choson and contemporary Korea
This book represents the very best of the Korean poetic tradition, from Yi Kyu-bo to the present, a poetry alert to humour and transcendence. Kevin O’Rourke is an Irish priest working with the Columban Fathers in Korea. Currently he is professor of English at Kyunghee University. Source: back cover [Read More]
Pine River and Lone Peak: An Anthology of Three Choson Dynasty Poets
From the publisher’s website: Taken from the pen names Chong Ch’ol and Yun Sondo, respectively, Pine River and Lone Peak represents the works of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Korean masters of the short lyric poetry (sijo) and narrative verse (kasa) forms. This new translation also includes the works of Pak Illo, as well as a … [Read More]
Korean Classical Literature: An Anthology
LKL says: It looks like this title has now been digitised. According to the LTI Korea website, where you can probably acquire an eBook, the volume includes works by Pak Chiwon and Yi Injik. This is confirmed by a quick scan of the contents page which you can see on the Kindle version. Hard copies … [Read More]
Slow Chrysanthemums: Classical Korean Poems in Chinese
Kim Jong-gil’s personal anthology of one hundred Korean poems written in Chinese covers a period of over a thousand years, from the late ninth century to the beginning of the twentieth. In his introduction to this fascinating poetry, Kim Jong-gil traces the background to the literary use of Chinese in Korea, and discusses the features … [Read More]
Love in mid-winter night: Korean sijo poetry
No information available [Read More]
Black Crane: An Anthology of Korean Literature
Difficult to obtain other than in a couple of libraries in Denmark and Germany. [Read More]
Poems from Korea: A historical anthology
Compiled and translated by Peter H. Lee. Foreword by Norman Holmes Pearson Billed as the UNESCO collection of representative works, this volume contains works by many authors, from King Mu of Paekche onwards. According to Stanford University’s Searchworks, this collection was first published in 1964 under the title: Anthology of Korean poetry from the earliest … [Read More]