Social Authorship and the Production of Texts in Late Chosŏn: An Analytical Bibliography

Abstract

Abstract This research aims to revisit the study of the Ch’ŏngjanggwan chŏnsŏ (Complete works of Yi Tŏngmu, 1741-1793), with particular emphasis on its collaborative production, transmission, and modern appropriation. By analyzing eight different versions from North America, Japan, Korea, and China, I explore how each text was constructed by multiple agencies and constantly transformed through historical transmission. In the process of the collaborative production of the book, the selection of a primary author’s work was reinterpreted by the choices of those who received and collected the given collection of Yi’s writings. Although Yi is considered the author, each manuscript collection was transformed without his knowledge or consent. Thus, through a complex process of adaptation and transformation, a multiplicity of agencies involved in the production of the book have filtered and negotiated the author’s original intention. Addressing the notion of “social authorship,” this research challenges the solitary author model as well as the notion of canon as a complete and fixed entity. All the texts examined in this study were cultural and social products. Ch’ŏngjanggwan chŏnsŏ was produced and transformed through constant negotiations among the original author, editors, and readers. Although it has been valued as one of the most important literary canons of late Chosŏn, the collection was not a closed set of texts; rather, the particular set of texts in any version is “fluid and flexible,” and transformation during transmission was expected.