IOM RAS - Publications

Latest news
The 47th Annual Session of Saint Pete... Freiman Readings 2025 (information le... The 4th International Academic Confer... Monograph: Mongolica. Vol. XXVIII, No... Diakonoff Readings 2025 (information ... “Current Issues of Buddhological an... “Military Oriental studies: 80th an... The Second All-Russia Hebraistics Ses... Anniversary of I.V. Bogdanov A.M. Kulikova has died

Most popular
Iranological Conference In Memory of ... Meeting of the IOM RAS Academic Counc... The 10th Conference of Young Oriental... Congratulations on the Day of Russian... The Second All-Russia Hebraistics Ses... “Military Oriental studies: 80th an... “Current Issues of Buddhological an... “Current Issues of Buddhological an... Diakonoff Readings 2025 (information ... Anniversary of I.V. Bogdanov

Main menu

News

Trotsevich A.F. The Plots of Chinese Fiction In Korean Vernacular Novels // Literaru Migrators. Traditional Chinese Fiction In Asia (17-20th centuries). Ed. by C.Salmon. Beijing 1987. P. 85-105.

Trotsevich, Adelaida Fedorovna

CONCLUSION

An attempt was made to outline some Korean vernacular novels, in which plots borrowed from the Chinese fiction are used. I dealt here only with the problem of the contents of literary works, trying to ascertain which elements of the Chinese plots were preserved in the Korean novels, which were changed and what was added to them by the Koreans. It must be said, that one can also observe phenomena of the kind described above in vernacular versions of the Korean literary works originally written in hanmun (classical Chinese written by Koreans). For instance, «The Nine Cloud Dream» by Kim Manjung (1637-1692) written in hanmun was circulated as a vernacular work for common people. That romance was not only shortened, but was also turned from a work of philosophic profundity into a piece of amusing reading.

The adduced instances allow me to draw the following preliminary conclusions: 1. the Korean translators of the Chinese xiaoshuo did not bother to give an exact rendering of the original text; 2. the Chinese work was changed and obtained the form of a vernacular novel of the kind popular among ill-educated readers; 3. such «translations» of the Chinese xiaoshuo were circulated in cheap edition as works of vernacular fiction. Thus they became the property of Korean literature for the common people; 4. It was not only a translation from one language to the other, but also a transformation from one genre to the other, as well as a bringing down from a higher to a lower level of literature.

PDF-files

The entire paper

Keywords

Korean translations of Chinese xiaoshuo
Korean vernacular novels
«The Nine Cloud Dream»

Random news: Announcements

On October 3–4, 2023 the IOM RAS will hold the “Ancient Oriental Studies” Conference dedicated to the 120th anniversary of Yuriy Y. Perepyolkin (1903–1982), the 95th anniversary of Muhammad A. Dandamayev (1928–2017), and the 90th anniversary of Oleg D. Berlev (1933–2000). The program of the conference is now available.
Read more...

Programming© N.Shchupak; Design© M.Romanov

beacon type