2019 JSG Summer Hanmun Workshop (Intermediate)

Description

The purpose of this course is to provide students an intensive training in what is commonly referred to as “classical Chinese,” or hanmun, which constitutes the nucleus of the literary languages of premodern China, Korea, and Japan. Because this workshop is intended for future researchers and scholars of premodern Korean culture in a broader context of East Asian civilization, which some call the “Sinosphere,” we will focus on the most fundamental sentence patterns and grammatical devices commonly used in hanmun, exploring some canonical texts that embody the linguistic and cultural grammars of classical Chinese literature.

Each day, the class will study grammatical devices and patterns with simple sentences and read (excerpts of) regular hanmun texts for applied practice. We will read and critically analyze the texts, with which to formulate an academically-minded English translation of them. At the end of the workshop, students are expected to become familiar with different types of texts, to gain first-hand knowledge around the original texts of old Korean books, and more importantly, to become intellectually independent in their own future research critically engaging primary texts.

Class

A daily class is divided into three sessions. In Session 1 we read the Kyemong p’yŏn 啓蒙篇 (A Chapter to Enlighten the Unenlightened), a collection of short prose-sentences to initiate beginners in hanmun texts. The class comprises studying syntactic and morphological patterns established by grammatical words, building up from the simplest forms to the more complex. In Session 2 we read the Ch’ugu 推句 (Versed Lines), a collection of quatrains epitomizing hanmun verses for those who have finished Ch’ŏnjamun 千字文 (Thousand-character text). Studying with Ch’ugu and Kyemong pyŏn allows us to experience a most typical foundation of hanmun education in both poetic- and prose-style sentences. The first two sessions will intensively engage two fundamental practices of hanmun literacy: parsing (both vocal and visual) and close reading. In Session 3 we translate excerpts from various literary pieces from China and Korea, applying the practices we learn in the first two sessions. The underlying focus of the study progresses as follows:

Week 1 : basic structure, predication and commenting, parts of speech and word order, substantives and predicatives, nouns and pronouns, action verbs and stative verbs, adverbs, etc.
Week 2 : discourse and context, parallelism and correspondence, building contexts and “dragging”, conjunctives and connectives, 語氣詞 and 語助詞
Week 3 : intertextuality, allusions, and pattern, literary precedents and elicitors

Reading the original text together, parsing its sentences, and carefully analyzing parts both syntactically and semantically, which will form a basic training of translation. The instructor will give lectures when needed, to reinforce the knowledge of grammatical words, information on reference tools, and relevant sociocultural context of fundamental importance. Each student will be responsible for looking up and learning unfamiliar hantcha, practicing to punctuate sentences that were studied in the previous classes, and participating in drafting translations. The outcome of translation will be archived and shared.

Translation: We aim to practice academic translation. An academic translation should prove to be comprehensive to an intellectual reader for whom no previous knowledge of or about the text is assumed, rendered in a clear, precise, yet hermeneutically nuanced language. There are four aspects of concentration in our training:

(1) Faithfulness to the original text

(2) Linguistic clarity of the translating language

(3) Detailed annotation to integrate contextual and intertextual information

(4) Observance of academic convention for translation

Instructor

오영균 (吳英均, Young Kyun Oh)

Participants

cf. 역대 참가자 Previous Participants

연도	성명	국적	소속	직위	연구/전공분야	그룹
2019	Arzberger, Nadia	미국 USA	미국 하와이대학교 마노아 University of Hawaii-Manoa	석사과정 Master's Student	Anthropology	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Bass, Emma	캐나다 Canada	캐나다 퀸즈대학교 Queen's University	석사과정 Master's Student	Cultural Studies	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Belokon, Olga	러시아 Russia	캐나다 브리티시 컬럼비아대학교 University of British Columbia	석사과정 Master's Student	Korean Literature	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Kaltenbach, Kristina	독일 Germany	독일 베를린자유대학교 Freie Universität Berlin	대학생 Undergraduate Student	Korean Studies	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Kim, Stella S.	미국 USA	미국 컬럼비아대학교 Columbia University	박사과정 Doctoral Student	East Asian Languages and Cultures (Premodern Korea/gender and women's history)	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Kus, Canan	독일 Germany	독일 보훔 루르대학교 Ruhr-Universität Bochum	석사과정 Master's Student	Korean Language and Literature	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Sanchez, Hector I.	멕시코 Mexico	미국 펜실베이니아대학교 University of Pennsylvania	석사과정 Master's Student	East Asian Languages and Civilizations	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Waddell, Ethan	미국 USA	미국 시카고대학교 University of Chicago	박사과정 Doctoral Student	Modern Korean Literature	Intermediate Training Group
2019	Yi, Ivanna Sang Een	미국 USA	미국 워싱턴대학교 세인트루이스 Washington University in St. Louis	박사 후 펠로우 Postdoctoral Fellow	Korean and Native American literatures and cultures	Intermediate Training Group

Schedule

Session 1 - 9:00–10:30 AM

Session 2 - 10:40 AM–12:00 PM

Session 3 - 1:00–3:00 PM

the 3-Week Schedule - View Details

Day	Contents
7/1	Opening Ceremony, Placement Test 　　Orientation	First Day
7/2	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 1–3 S2: Ch’ugu 1, 3, 4 S3: Select readings 8, 23, 4
7/3	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 4–6 S2: Select readings 12, 13, 16	Special lecture Field trip
7/4	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 7–9 S2: Ch’ugu 5, 6, 7 S3: Select readings 9, 24, 18, 27
7/5	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 10–13 S2: Ch’ugu 9, 10, 13 S3: Select readings 25, 29, 30
7/8	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 14–18 S2: Ch’ugu 14, 15, 16 S3: Select readings 40, 41	Special lecture
7/9	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 19–22 S2: Ch’ugu 18, 19, 22 S3: Select readings 1, 5, 42
7/10	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 22–26 S2: Ch’ugu 23, 24, 26 S3: Select readings 48, 28
7/11	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 27–29 S2: Ch’ugu 28, 30, 32 S3: Select readings 34, 38, 36
7/12	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 30–33 S2: Select readings 2, 14	Field Trip
7/15	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 34–37 S2: Ch’ugu 37, 39, 42 S3: Select readings 22, 20, 31
7/16	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 38–40 S2: Ch’ugu 46, 47, 50	Special Lecture
7/17	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 41–43 S2: Ch’ugu 51, 56, 57 S3: Select readings 39, 33, 37
7/18	S1: Kyemong p’yŏn 44–45 S2: Ch’ugu 58, 59, 60 S3: Select readings 47, 49
7/19	S1: Review S2: Closing ceremony	Graduation

Translation

We aim to practice academic translation. An academic translation should prove to be comprehensive to an intellectual reader for whom no previous knowledge of or about the text is assumed, rendered in a clear, precise, yet hermeneutically nuanced language. There are four aspects of concentration in our training:

(1) Faithfulness to the original text

(2) Linguistic clarity of the translating language

(3) Detailed annotation to integrate contextual and intertextual information

(4) Observance of academic convention for translation

List of Hanmun Text

Session 1 : Kyemong p’yŏn 啓蒙篇 (A Chapter to Enlighten the Unenlightened)

Session 2 : Ch’ugu 推句 (Versed Lines)

Session 3 : Excerpts for practice

Session 1: Kyemong p’yŏn 啓蒙篇

The Kyemong p’yŏn [Chapters to enlighten the unenlightened] was one of the first textbooks for novices, usually placed after learning the Ch’ŏnjamun 千字文 [Thousand-character text] and before reading the Tongmong sŏnsŭp 童蒙先習 [Preparatory Learning for the Youth] in the nineteenth-century-Chosŏn curriculum for hanmun education. The term kyemong 啓蒙 (Ch. qimeng) literally means “cracking open the [curtain] of ignorance,” where mong 蒙 is a usual word for the unenlightened. There are several primers containing mong in their titles in Sinitic tradition, e.g., Mengqiu 蒙求 [Saving the ignorance, 746], Kyŏngmong yogyŏl 擊蒙要訣 [Essential methods to awaken the unenlightened, 1577], Tongmeng xuzhi 童蒙須知 [What children should know, 1187], and the aforementioned Tongmong sŏnsŭp (ca. 1541). One should note that the word mong itself does not mean “children” but only “unenlightened” or “dim” unless it is compounded by tong 童, for ignorance (including illiteracy) is not necessarily a feature that applied only to children but to all uneducated. Especially in the Confucian context, knowledge and education take its ultimate meaning in moral cultivation, beyond the modern sense of general knowledge. Therefore, these traditional primers inevitably engage a strong sense of ethical-philosophical inculcation in their contents, such as the moral conducts of in the family, the meaning of being human, social ethics and proprieties.
The compiler-author of this books is unclear. It is often contributed to Chang Hon 張混 (1759-1828), a praised chungin 中人 (interclass) writer, poet, and educator whose family had lived in Seoul for generations. He worked in the Office of Printing Inspection (Kaminso 監印所) as a checker (sajun司準) from 1790 to 1818 and participated in numerous court publishing projects. Chang wrote a few primer-type books to educate children, including the Ahŭi wŏllam 兒戱原覽 [A primary read for children at play], Mongyu p’yŏn 蒙喻篇 [Instruction for the uneducated], and Ch’ohak chahwi 初學字彙 [Character book for beginners]. Considering his writings and the fact that interclass writers’ active involvement in elementary-literacy education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Kyemong p’yŏn was customarily attributed to Chang Hon, but there is no clear indication that he did brush this work. However, it is safe to assume that it was circulated and used in literacy education at town study halls (sŏdang 書堂) as late as in the late nineteenth century. It was also quite popularly published in the twentieth century, published in the form of ŏnhaebon 諺解本 (rendition with vernacular glosses and interpretation in hangŭl), i.e., Kyemongp’yŏn ŏnhae 啓蒙篇, in woodblock prints, types, and manuscripts. Interestingly, the edition without ŏnhae is not extant. The Jangsŏgak Library at AKS also has several editions of Kyemong p’yŏn ŏnhae, one of which is the early-twentieth-century block print that we include in the textbook.

date	啓蒙篇
7/02	啓蒙篇 01 - 03
7/03	啓蒙篇 04 - 06
7/04	啓蒙篇 07 - 09
7/05	啓蒙篇 10 - 13
7/08	啓蒙篇 14 - 18
7/9	啓蒙篇 19 - 22
7/10	啓蒙篇 23 - 26
7/11	啓蒙篇 27 - 29
7/12	啓蒙篇 30 - 33
7/15	啓蒙篇 34 - 37
7/16	啓蒙篇 38 - 40
7/17	啓蒙篇 41 - 43
7/18	啓蒙篇 44 - 45
7/19	啓蒙篇 Review

Session 2: Ch’ugu 推句

The Ch’ugu is a collection of pentasyllabic quatrains (o’ŏn chŏlgu 五言絕句) for beginners of hanmun during the Chosŏn dynasty. There are altogether 60 quatrains, many chosen from known poetic lines, containing motifs and images familiar to novices. It is one of the typical primers taught to learners who have finished character lessons with, most likely, the Ch’ŏnjamun 千字文, along with the Saja sohak 四字小學 [Four-character Minor Learning], Tongmong sŏnsŭp, and Kyŏngmong yogyŏl 擊夢要訣 [Essential precepts to awake the unenlightened]. The title "Ch’ugu" could be taken as “selected lines” (ch’u 推 “to select”) but also have come from ch’ugo (or proscriptively pronounced t’oego) 推敲 “push or knock,” a verb coined for the story of Jia Dao 賈島 (780?–843) and Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) to mean “polish or perfect the language of a literary work.”^[1] Ch’ugu 推句 as a verb was then used in the sense of writing poems, and if it was indeed where the title was chosen, it would more precise to pronounce the title as t'oegu, not ch’ugu. All extant copies of Ch’ugu is in the form of manuscript, but as Ŏ Sukkwŏn’s 魚叔權 Kosa ch’waryo 攷事撮要 (1554) recorded the presence of its printing blocks in 1558, it is possible that Ch’ugu was more popular as a primer in mid-Chosŏn period.

Note

↑ Jia Dao once composed a poem, sitting on a mule, which included lines, “Birds sleep on the tree in the middle of the pond, a monk knocks on the door under the moon” 鳥宿池中樹, 僧敲月下門. He was having second thought of using t’oe 推 “push” instead of ko 敲 “knock,” but could not decide. Occupied by this thought, he failed to step back to make way when Han Yu’s mayoral march was progressing the street, which was a serious offense. Han Yu summoned Jia Dao and interrogated why Jia did not step aside. After hearing what happened, Han Yu said that he preferred ko instead of t’oe, upon which they became good friends in literature. This story is introduced in the Tangshi jishi 唐詩紀事.

date	推句
7/2	推句 01, 03, 04
7/4	推句 05, 06, 07
7/5	推句 09, 10, 13
7/8	推句 14, 15, 16
7/9	推句 18, 19, 22
7/10	推句 23, 24, 26
7/11	推句 28, 30, 32
7/15	推句 37, 39, 42
7/16	推句 46, 47, 50
7/17	推句 51, 56, 57
7/18	推句 58, 59, 60
7/19	推句 Review