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[Web-exclusive] Philology and Pedagogy in Concert: Aligning Sound, Script, and Sense through Hansi scrap
by Scott Wells
November 19, 2025
Ji-Eun Lee’s Korean Sinitic Poetry from Ancient Times to 1945: Si in the East is a much-needed contribution to the study and teaching of Korean literary culture. Co-edited with Jang Wu Lee and David McCann, it is not merely a new anthology but a genuinely pedagogical gateway into the world of Korean poetry in Literary Sinitic. Published as volume 7 in Brill’s series Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis, the book situates Korea within the broader transnational network of Sinitic writing while also recovering the distinctive voices that give hansi an enduring resonance.
The volume’s organization is clear and didactic. Following an extensive introduction and technical guides on form, sound, and the glossing practice hyŏnt’o, the anthology presents fifty-one representative poems divided into three periods: Silla and Koryŏ, Early Chosŏn, and Later Chosŏn. Each part opens with a cultural-historical overview and proceeds poet by poet, offering the original text in sinographs, a modern Korean reading with glosses, and an English translation accompanied by commentary and notes on allusion. A detailed chronology aligning Korean and Chinese dynasties and an explanation of romanization conventions allows readers from different linguistic backgrounds to navigate with confidence.
Lee’s introduction is especially valuable for clarifying what distinguishes hansi from “Chinese poetry.” While Korean poets drew deeply from Tang and Song precedents, they developed subtle differences of diction, tone, and irony that mark a distinctively Korean sensibility. Her discussion of Chŏng Yagyong’s poem declaring himself “a man of Chosŏn / who delights in writing Korean poems” encapsulates this balance of cosmopolitan form and local consciousness. Equally instructive is the section on hyŏnt’o, which demonstrates how Korean readers historically mediated the gap between Sinitic syntax and Korean morphology through performative glossing—an insight that makes the oral dimension of hansi newly audible for students and scholars alike.
The editors’ commitment to sound and performance sets this anthology apart from earlier collections, which typically confined themselves to English translation and minimal annotation. Here, the sonic qualities of each poem—rhyme, tone pattern, rhythm—are foregrounded through the inclusion of modern Korean readings rendered both in Han’gŭl and McCune-Reischauer romanization. This tri-lingual format (Sinitic, Korean, English) represents the book’s chief pedagogical innovation. It invites readers to move among languages, tracing how a single character resonates differently across phonetic systems. In classroom use, the format functions as scaffolding rather than substitution, drawing students toward the original text by encouraging them to attempt their own translations and to hear hansi as a living, recitable art.
If the translations themselves occasionally read as literal or restrained, that restraint reflects the editors’ priority of philological transparency over poetic flourish. The English versions favor accuracy of image and allusion, often at the expense of lyrical cadence, but the gain is in clarity. Teachers will appreciate that the notes identify sources in the works of Du Fu, Li Bai, and countless other predecessors, mapping the intertextual webs that form the backbone of the Sinitic tradition. The Korean translations, too, tend toward functional fidelity, and while they may not capture the prosodic heights of the originals, they succeed in illuminating the semantic and syntactic structures for students at varying levels of proficiency.
The book’s design choices further reflect its instructional intent. The two-column layout prioritizes clarity over aesthetic flow—ideal for study, less inviting for leisurely reading—but that is a forgivable trade-off in a reference work of this scope. My only substantive reservation is structural: the decision to compress more than a millennium of Korean hansi into a single volume necessarily limits the depth of engagement possible with poets of major stature such as Ch’oe Ch’iwŏn, Kim Pusik, Yi Kyubo, Sŏ Kŏjŏng, Yi Hwang, Yi I, Pak Chiwŏn, and Chŏng Yagyong. A three-volume format would have permitted fuller contextual essays and expanded selections from each master. Yet no anthology can be all things to all readers, and the editors wisely privilege temporal breadth and chronological coherence over exhaustive depth and commentary.
In sum, Korean Sinitic Poetry from Ancient Times to 1945 stands as the culmination of decades of scholarship on Korea’s participation in the Sinographic world and the beginning of a more sound-conscious, multilingual pedagogy for reading that heritage. For the non-specialist, it offers an accessible window onto a rich but often overlooked literary tradition; for the Korean-language learner, it provides an unparalleled bridge to classical texts; and for the seasoned scholar, it restores the auditory and performative dimensions too long absent from modern criticism. It is, in every sense, a landmark addition to the field and a model of how philology and pedagogy can once again converge.
* Editor’s Note: The McCune-–Reischauer romanization is used in this review to remain consistent with the reviewed book.
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Scott Wells
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