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Visualizing Divergence:Rhetorical Education and Historical Imagination in China and Korea (ca. 1314–1644)
This essay explores how basic computer programming and data visualization provides new tools to understand the respective development of rhetorical education and historical imagination in China and Korea during the same period of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Gathering data from large databases that contain thousands of collections printed in China and Korea, I show that a critical divergence emerged during the mid- and late sixteenth century in the field of rhetorical training. Specifically, the historical interests of Chinese elites gravitated toward the most recent episodes in the history of their own dynasty, while Chosŏn elites were increasingly devoted to the earliest phase of the Central Civilization. These observations complement existing studies that have focused on connections between China and Korea, and offer a starting point for understanding parallels and divergences between different regions and realms in East Asia.
data-assisted approach, Chŏson Korea, Ming China, rhetorical education, historical imagination, divergence
[End Page 93]
Introduction: Programming-Informed Research and Intellectual History
It is well known that both China and Korea have a long history of using examinations to recruit officials.1 Lesser known is that the two realms shared similar examination curricula, especially during the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries (see Appendix 1), as a result of which elites and students in China and Korea often studied the same classics and wrote on the same prompts.2 What remains largely unknown concerns how the literati on each side used such shared training to advance their intellectual agendas. Put differently, how did the intellectual mainstreams of the two realms diverge from each other despite the shared educational institutions, intimate diplomatic relationships, and regular exchanges of books, commodities, and state information?3
In this essay, I employ computer programming and data visualization to answer these questions. Gathering data from large databases that contain thousands of literary collections printed in China and Korea, I show that a critical divergence emerged during the mid- and late sixteenth century. Specifically, the historical interests of Chinese elites gravitated toward the most recent episodes in the history of their own dynasty,4 while Chosŏn elites were increasingly devoted the earliest phase of the Central Civilization (zhonghua/chunghwa 中華).5 These observations complement the findings of existing studies that have focused on the connections between China and Korea6 and offer a starting point for understanding the parallels and divergences between different regions and realms in East Asia.
Methodologically, I adopt a data-assisted approach, to use Miguel Escobar Varela's term, to address the middle ground between data-driven distant reading and traditional close readings.7 To be more specific, with the former, researchers use awe-inspiring algorithms to extract information from vast datasets and then conduct quantitative research; with the latter, scholars start with keyword searches embedded in existing digital platforms to identify documents of their interests, and then read them between lines. While much existing scholarship has demonstrated that advanced-level literacy in algorithm enriches close reading, here I seek to convince that even the most basic programming can help humanists work with digital corpora and collect focal documents.8 As such, at the broadest level, this essay adds further evidence that humanists can benefit from embracing the digital turn, as Javier Cha has depicted in this volume.9 [End Page 94]
In terms of content, I narrow myself to an educational component that once flourished in China and Korea. This rhetorical education, as I shall call it, required students to write official documents in literary Sinitic on behalf of someone else10; hence, it trained individuals to compose genres, including memorials, edicts, and decrees, that were critical to the everyday maintenance of the government. To offer an example, a real prompt in the provincial examination of Jiangzhe (roughly the Lower Yangtze Delta) in 1314 asked examinees to write an "Imitative Draft of the Tang Appointment Edict Appointing the Unemployed/Recluse Yang Cheng as the Grand Master of Remonstrance 擬唐處士陽城除諫議大夫誥."11 The examinees of 1314 were asked to impersonate the Tang (618–907) monarch (in this case, Emperor Dezong 德宗 [742–805]), who had decided to appoint Yang Cheng 陽城 (736–805) as the Grand Master of Remonstrance in 788.12 The keyword ni/ŭi (擬 or imitative draft in my translation) indicates that the examinees should not only imitate the Tang edict style but also imagine themselves preparing a draft for Emperor Dezong to sign and release.13
Focusing on the imitative drafts of official documents has particular advantages. First, despite their importance in both China and Korea, such imitative drafts remain one of the most understudied components of the civil service examinations.14 In China, it is until very recently that Hou Meizhen 侯美珍 starts to draw scholarly attention to this part of the examination,15 and few, to my knowledge, have systematically surveyed this component in Korean examinations. This essay is thus the first study in any language that compares the rhetorical training in question in China and Korea.
Second, the ni/ŭi writings of official documents offer unique access to the connections and parallels in East Asia and especially between China and Korea.16 Specifically, when the Mongol empire reestablished the civil service examination in 1314, it made this form of imitative drafting a compulsory part of the examination.17 During the late fourteenth century, Ming China (1368–1644) and Chosŏn Korea (1392–1897) inherited the curriculum established by the Mongols (see Appendix 1).18 Although a variety of other examinations existed in the Ming and, especially, in the Chosŏn, writing official documents constituted a key part of the examination in both realms.19 Tens of thousands of individuals in China and Korea were therefore exposed to this form of rhetorical training. For this reason, this essay centers on the period from 1314 to 1644, which bridges the reestablishment of the civil service examination during the Yuan (1271–1368) and the fall of the Ming.20 [End Page 95]
Third, and most importantly, because individuals were required to impersonate a historical (or sometimes hypothetical) ruler or minister, they were in a unique position to articulate their understanding of what these figures could say or should have said. Elsewhere, I have contended that this rhetorical education bred a variety of thinkers in Korea and China, who conceptualized their rights compared with the throne, conceived alternative historical scenarios, and reproblematized the proper order of the world.21 Here, it suffices to note that the elites in both realms produced such ni/ŭi writings not only to prepare for the examination but also as a part of their intellectual exploration. As such, they collected and published the pieces they wrote, which have survived in large numbers (see below). Against this backdrop, the following questions command our attention: What kinds of imitative drafts of official documents did the literati of China and Korea anthologize? Who were the most popular impersonatees in each realm? And how did literati interests evolve over time?
Collecting the Data
To answer the questions raised above, I focus on two large databases of literary collections. On the Korean side, I use the Han'guk munjip ch'onggan 韓國文集叢刊/Korean Anthologies Collection DB (hereafter HGMJ). As its website states, it includes 1259 collections (in 500 volumes) ranging from the ninth to early twentieth centuries, most of which are anthologies of a specific author, which I shall call the authorial collections. It is worth stressing that this corpus is far from comprehensive. It constitutes only a small subset of the even larger Han'gung yŏktae munjim ch'ongsŏ 韓國歷代文集叢書, which includes over 3600 collections in 3000 volumes—not mentioning the large array of prints and manuscripts excluded from such collections.
On the Chinese side, I use the Zhongguo jiben guji ku 中國基本古籍庫/Database of Chinese classic ancient books (hereafter ZGGJ). Of the over 10,000 titles of rare books in ZGGJ, Version 7.0 includes an estimated 1000 titles by Yuan and Ming authors, the vast majority of which are authorial collections that anthologize the writings of a certain author; thousands of other surviving collections are not included. Hence, ZGGJ only contains a small proportion of the surviving books of the focal period (thirteenth to seventeenth centuries).
Although both HGMJ and ZGGJ have clear limitations, there are reasons to take them as a starting point. Critically, whoever produced [End Page 96] HGMJ and ZGGJ did not deliberately include or exclude imitative drafts of official documents; instead, they simply included literary collections, especially collections of particular authors that happened to be available to them. In this sense, both are relatively random samples for studying ni/ŭi writings. The challenge, accordingly, is how to collect the targeted documents effectively and efficiently from large digital collections.
Because the titles of the imitative drafts of official documents usually start with ni/ŭi 擬, it offers a critical clue for identifying these writings. However, not all pieces whose titles start with ni/ŭi are imitative drafts of official documents; some are imitative poems, while others are drafts of functional bureaucratic documents. After all, in imperial/royal bureaucracy, any document without final approval is a ni/ŭi draft. Researchers must thus read these pieces to decide their identity.
As HGMJ is fully open access, it is downloadable in an xml format and can be easily converted into txt. Table 1 compares the outcome of a manual keyword search with the results of a Python-aided data collection, the code of which, written by Gloria Yuzhuo Wang, is available via GitHub.22 It shows that although human selection is indispensable, the former is more efficient than the latter and yields far more comprehensive results. It also reduces working hours from over 50 to 3 as well as catches over a hundred pieces that the human researcher (me, in this case) had missed while searching and browsing the keywords. Specifically, a key advantage of Python is that it not only identifies keywords (line 6: payload = {'keyword': '擬', 'secId': 'MO_GS', 'start': str(start), 'rows': '500'}), but also allows the researcher to exclude unrelated entries (lines 22–52).23 Unfortunately, ZGGJ (like most of the databases produced by Chinese companies) only allows users to conduct a keyword search using its own portal, which has created a substantial barrier for digital humanistic studies to overcome.
Before analyzing the titles I have extracted (that is, the 248 and 259 pieces from HGMJ and ZGGJ, respectively), I give an overview of this result. While the context in which a ni/ŭi was composed is unknown in
Sorting the Imitative Drafts of the Official Documents from HGMJ and ZGGJ
[End Page 97] most cases, whoever incorporated it into the literary collection may have included an additional note on it being a response composed during and for a certain examination. For instance, Shikuangzhai quanji 識匡齋全集 (Complete Collection of the Studio of Knowing Rectification), the collection of the Ming scholar Liu Kangzhi 劉康祉 (1583–?), notes that an imitative draft of a memorial of gratitude was "a piece of the metropolitan examination of gengxu [1610]" gengxu hui mo 庚戌會墨.24 Similarly, T'aech'ŏn chip 苔泉集 (Collection of Moss Spring), which anthologizes the works of Min Inpaek 閔仁伯 (1552–1626), states that a memorial written in the voice of the Song (960–1279) official Li Gang 李綱 (1083–1140) was composed for/during the examination (kwa cha 科作).25
Among the 507 pieces from both ZGGJ and HGMJ, a relatively small proportion are explicitly stated to be composed during/for the examinations (12.4% in China and 18.1% in Korea; Table 2). This does not mean that the ni/ŭi writings in the literary collections are unrelated to the examination cultures. If one has browsed the prompts of actual examinations in China and Korea, one cannot help but notice that most ni/ŭi writings in literary collections are devoted to topics similar to real examination prompts, as shown in Table 2. Critically, these 507 pieces are not a mere subset of examination prompts and responses but go beyond it in various ways. Interestingly, our data suggests that Ming literary collections are more likely to include ni/ŭi writings unrelated to examination prompts than their Korean counterparts (17.8% vs. 5.2%). In other words, a hypothesis one may formulate is that the Ming and Chosŏn elites held slightly different attitudes toward the formation of literary anthologies, and Chosŏn scholars were more open to the idea of incorporating their writings for examinations into the authorial collection than were their Ming counterparts. Further research, however, is needed to test this hypothesis. For the current purpose, at our disposal is a collection of pieces composed by literati when they were studying for the examinations, playing literary games with each other, and under other unrecorded circumstances. In other words, the corpus constitutes the point
Context of the Composition of the Extracted Titles
[End Page 98] at which the culture of the examinations met that of everyday learning, literary practice, collection formation, and printing.
The search results can also be divided by genre. Marked in gray in Table 3 are the genres that appeared in the provincial/metropolitan examinations in Ming China and preliminary/secondary examinations in Chosŏn Korea. In the Ming, although examinations gave three prompts (i.e., one decree, one appointment edict, and one memorial), candidates only needed to write on one of them. As Hou Meizhen demonstrated, from the early Ming, candidates tended to write the memorial of expression, and even examiners and educators were increasingly emphasizing the composition of this kind of memorial.26 Thus, it is unsurprising that memorials of expression were predominant among all the kinds of imitative drafts of official documents in these literary collections.
In Korea, memorials of expression 表 and note 箋 both played an important role in the examinations and these two kinds of documents outnumber the other documents among the 248 pieces from HGMJ.27 In contrast to the Ming, where examination candidates tended to avoid the prompts of writing decrees and appointment edicts, Chosŏn examination takers often composed these genres in real tests.28 Against this backdrop, it is not only observable but also understandable that decrees and appointment edicts were more popular in the collections of Korean elites than in their counterparts in China.
Moreover, writing formal letters 書 in the voice of historical figures, though never a part of the real examinations in either realm, enjoyed some
Extracted Titles by Genre
[End Page 99] popularity in the literary collections. As such, Table 3 confirms our conclusions drawn from Table 2. Accordingly, the pieces collected from HGMJ and ZGGJ lead us to a unique aspect of literary culture in China and Korea, where literary elites rethought their examination responses, practiced examination prompts under their own initiative, and deployed their skills gained from such training to write pieces of their own interests.
Analying the Data
As mentioned above, with each title of ni/ŭi writing, the author impersonates another individual and this feature deserves close scrutiny. To offer an example, the collection of Cho Ch'anhan 趙纘韓 (1572–1631) includes the following piece: "Imitative Draft of the Memorial by which Wang Qiang Petitioned Not to Marry the Chanyu 擬漢王嬙請勿嫁單于表."29 We do not know when Cho, the impersonator in my terminology, composed this piece. Here, I use his year of birth plus 33 to be the approximate "year of composition," thus, 1605 in this case (in other words, I assume that most imitative writings were composed when the author was around 33 years old). Wang Qiang 王嬙 (courtesy name Zhaojun 昭君, 51–15 b.c.), a palace lady of Han-dynasty China, is the impersonate in my terms. In 33 b.c., Emperor Yuandi of Han (75–33 b.c.) sent her to marry Hu-han-ye 呼韓邪 (d. 31 b.c.), the leader of the Steppe-based Xiongnu confederation.30 Thus, I take the "year of the impersonatee" to be 33 b.c. Cho, the Korean male around 1605 c.e., was writing on behalf of a Chinese lady in 33 b.c.
These data, manually collected, allow me to generate a scatter plot (Fig. 1). The triangles in gray represent the imitative drafts of official documents describing hypothetical situations that might happen at present, habitually, or in the future.31 In these cases, the impersonatee is usually not a specific person but the holder of a specific office. Starting from the sixteenth century, these kinds of prompts became increasingly important in the actual examinations in both China and Korea, thereby offering novel insights into Ming and Chosŏn politics.32 Nevertheless, they are not directly relevant for the current purpose, that is, to understand the perceptions of the past and historical imaginations in the two realms.
If we take the gray triangles as noises, the divergence between China and Korea becomes ostensible. During the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, there is no substantial difference between the two realms. Elites in both China and Korea imitatively drafted documents on [End Page 100]
Historical interests in the Chosŏn and Ming rhetorical exercises.
behalf of notable figures of the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties. However, from the mid- and late sixteenth century, the trend line (calculated based on the average "year of the impersonatee") of the Chosŏn data gravitates toward earlier periods in history, while its Ming counterpart moves toward more recent episodes.
Closer scrutiny reveals that the historical interests of the two realms evolved and the difference between them deepened (Fig. 2). In China, writing in the voice of Tang monarchs and ministers (lower part of Cluster B), although enjoying great popularity during the fourteenth century, was gradually falling out of fashion over the long fifteenth century. The reason, as mentioned above, is probably that writing Tang documents was no longer considered to be important in the actual examinations during the Ming. The sporadic interest in producing documents from the perspective of Song figures, which remained apparent in the sixteenth century, became more or less insignificant from about 1600. This change is also congruent with transitions in the field of real examinations; during the late sixteenth century, real examination prompts tended to feature events of the recent past. Interestingly, in actual provincial and metropolitan examinations in China, producing Han-dynasty decrees became obsolete over the course of the Ming; however, literati interest in the imitation of Han documents persisted over the centuries. Clearly, Ming litterateurs considered Handynasty [End Page 101]
Chosŏn/HGMJ (in green) and Ming/ZGGJ (in red) combined.
decrees as a genre of "ancient proses" (guwen 古文), embodying the key characteristics of classical antiquity.
In Chosŏn Korea, the devotion to writing in the voice of Han, Tang, and Song figures was consistent, at least from around 1500—a time from which more authorial collections were printed and have survived. As mentioned above, in Chosŏn examinations, crafting documents from the perspective of Han, Tang, and Song emperors and ministers remained important. Interestingly, despite the close interaction between China and Korea, Chosŏn elites barely bothered to imitatively draft documents on behalf of Ming officials. By contrast, from the 1560s, Chosŏn authors were increasingly fond of impersonating Chinese figures who flourished during or even earlier than the early Zhou (ca. eleventh century b.c.).
The respective transformations in China and Korea deepened throughout the first decades of the seventeenth century. Thus, in Korea, authors of the early seventeenth century such as Kang Sŏkki 姜碩期 (1580–1643) wrote the "Imitative Draft of the Memorial by which Officials Congratulate the Yellow Emperor for Having Conquered Chiyou 擬黃帝群臣賀平蚩尤表."33 The Yellow Emperor was considered as the founding ruler of the entire Central Civilization. In the narrative of Shi ji 史記 (Grand Scribe's records), the history written by Sima Qian 司馬遷 [End Page 102] (145–88? b.c.) that enjoyed authoritative status in both Ming and Chosŏn, the Yellow Emperor became the first Son of Heaven of the known history after his victory over Chiyou.34 Thus, Kang imagined that he were a minister of the Yellow Emperor and were congratulating his monarch for this decisive victory, recreating the very official document that was foundational to the Central Civilization.35
By contrast, in 1634 in China, authors were rather writing on the following prompt in the metropolitan examination, impersonating officials in 1621 (only 13 years beforehand):
The emperor has read the memorials on the situation west of the Liao River. He then orders high and low officials of the Department of Personnel and Chief Surveillance Bureau to devote all strength, share the same mind, contribute loyal deeds, and fulfill all duties. Imitatively draft the memorial by which all the officials express their gratitude. The first year of Tianqi (1621).
擬上覧文書奏遼河西情隨勑吏部都察院諭大小臣工各殫力恊心輸忠盡職羣臣謝表天啟元年36
"The situation west of the Liao River" refers to the rise of the Manchus, from whom the Ming suffered from a critical defeat in 1621.37 In writing this mock memorial, the Ming examination candidates of 1634 would imagine themselves as ministers in 1621 and ponder how they would express gratitude to—and thus reassure—the throne despite the military failure. The increasing emphasis upon frontier matters in Ming rhetorical training in the 1630s is clearly a continuation of the development that began in the sixteenth century.
In brief, precisely when Chosŏn elites were turning to the earliest phase of Chinese civilization, Ming authors gravitated toward the most recent episodes in the history of their own dynasty. Both prompts in real examinations and elite interests became increasingly different from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries and elite interests; and this process, it pays to stress, started before the Great East Asian War of 1592 to 1598 and the Manchu conquest of China.38 Identifying the causes of this divergence is a question of considerable complexity. Here, it is helpful to situate the changes as visualized in Figures 1 and 2 in the broader cultural transformations of Ming China and Chosŏn Korea.
In Korea, as Sixiang Wang demonstrated, elites of the late Koryo to the early Chosŏn endeavored to convince the emperors in Beijing that Koreans were co-builders of the imperial order and co-agents of the moral/civilizational cosmos ruled by the Son of Heaven.39 Mid- and late Chosŏn [End Page 103] literati, in recreating official documents from the perspective of the earliest rulers and ministers of the Central Civilization, continued their predecessors' legacies in contending that the Realm of the East (Korea) was a key part of this civilization. During this process, they paid particular attention to what is possible for an individual to say, do, and aspire in this moral and civilizational order that Korea and China created and maintained together.
Sixteenth-century China, as Nathan Vedal noted, witnessed the "emergence of a new emphasis on contemporary specialized knowledge."40 The shifting interests in writing official documents from the perspective of Ming officials and/or for potential events that may happen in the future provides yet another perspective to look at this transition. As I have proposed elsewhere, the increasing emphasis upon the ability to speak in the voice of recent, current, and future officials is closely related to—and even facilitated—the retheorization of eloquence, which proposed the art of ordering the world (jingshi 經世, or statecraft) is not notionally separable from the concrete skills of composing documents in specific contexts.41
Other divergences deserve no less attention (Figs. 3 and 4). My discussions have thus far centered on how Chinese and Korean elites imitatively drafted documents on behalf of political figures of the Central Realm, notably, the Zhou, Han, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties. At least
Korean impersonatees (blue circle or triangle) in Chosŏn/HGMJ and Ming/ZGGJ.
[End Page 104] starting from the sixteenth century, Korean elites also started to imitate prominent figures of the Koryŏ kingdom (918–1392) (see the blue circles in Fig. 3) and sometimes Chosŏn politicians (blue triangles). Relatedly, during the late sixteenth century, top-tier elites of Ming China were required to write mock memorials on behalf of the king of Chosŏn Korea. This much-understudied rhetorical exercise, while attesting to the dynamic relationship between China and Korea, gave rise to a distinctive philosophy of political representation.42 In brief, by the end of the sixteenth century, how to recreate a Korean voice in the language of bureaucratic literary Sinitic became a shared concerned in both Korea and China.
Writing in the voice of women became increasingly important over the course of the sixteenth century as well. It is particularly in Korea that male authors developed a stronger interest in impersonating women in the Chinese past (Fig. 4).43 In fact, compositions in the voice of women account for 4.4% (11/248) of the Korean dataset compared with 1.1% (3/259) for the Chinese one. Interestingly, a Korean author more often imitatively drafted documents on behalf of a Chinese woman than impersonated notable figures of the Korean tradition. Again, it goes beyond the scope of this method essay to explain or elaborate on this phenomenon, which would be a fascinating topic for further study.44
Women impersonatees (purple diamonds) in Chosŏn/HGMJ and Ming/ZGGJ.
[End Page 105]
Caveats and Closing Remarks
With more and more primary sources becoming digitized and available online, a key question is how researchers can make efficient use of them.45 In this essay, I have demonstrated that even basic coding tools can save a large number of hours of research as well as generate more comprehensive results than a simple keyword search. The discussions above also imply that databases that only allow keyword searches are no longer sufficient for historical and humanistic research.46 Based on this programming-informed research, I gathered findings on the intellectual divergence between China and Korea from the fourteenth to early seventeenth centuries.
Some of the key limitations of my observations must be highlighted because they mark the boundaries of the contribution of this essay. First, as stressed earlier, both HGMJ and ZGGJ cover only a tiny proportion of the collections published during the periods in question and only the former allows researchers to use algorithms to extract information (i.e., it is fully open). Second, when extracting titles and texts from authorial collections, either manually or using Python, the risk of losing significant information exists. For example, some compilers placed a series of writings in a single volume (juan/kwŏn 卷) for unknown reasons. (Appendix 2 offers such an example.) Although Volumes (kwŏn) 10 and 11 are devoted to imitative drafts of official documents, the former is composed of writings on topics unlikely to appear in real examinations.
Third, given the scope of this essay, I did not analyze the content of any of the documents. While close reading will eventually be necessary, digital methods including topic modeling, which allow researchers to compare large sets of texts of the same genres, are also productive.47 Fourth, at this stage, I have not collected specific information on these literary collections, including the time and place of their publication; even more importantly, a growing body of scholarship in both Ming and Chosŏn book history has stressed "the important yet neglected contributions of manuscripts."48 For future research, it would be interesting to measure, for instance, the data of books printed in specific regions or cities of China and Korea, and consider how the intellectual horizon as seen in printed books differed from that of manuscripts.49
Shoufu Yin is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia, Canada (shoufu.yin@ubc.ca).
Notes
1. Cf. John Duncan, The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
2. Shoufu Yin, "The 'Chinese' Rhetorical Curriculum and a Transcultural History of Political Thought, ca. 1250–1650" (PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2021), 130–4.
3. For diplomatic exchanges, see Sixiang Wang, "Co-constructing Empire in Early Chosŏn Korea: Knowledge Production and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1392–1592" (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2015). For literary exchanges between China and Korea, see, for instance, No Kyŏng-hŭi, 17-segi chŏnban'gi Han-Chung munhak kyoryu 17세기전반기한중 문학 교류 [Literary Exchange Between Korea and China During the First Half of the Seventeenth Century] (Kyŏnggi: T'aehaksa, 2015); Suyoung Son, "How to Read a Sinographic Text in Eighteenth-Century Chosŏn Korea: Liuxi waizhuan and Yi Tŏngmu's Compilation of Noeroe nangnak sŏ," The Journal of Asian Studies 78, no. 2 (2019): 329–31, doi:10.1017/S0021911819000160; Ross King, "Idu in and as Korean Literature," in The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature (London: Routledge, 2022), in print. Jamie Jungmin Yoo, "Subversive Eyes: Relocating Korean Du Fu in the Network of Exegeses," Review of Korean Studies 25, no. 2 (2022): 195–214.
4. See below for how this phenomenon is related to Nathan Vedal's observation in "From Tradition to Community: The Rise of Contemporary Knowledge in Late Imperial China," The Journal of Asian Studies 79, no. 1 (2020): 77–101, doi:10.1017/S0021911819000627.
5. On Chosŏn perceptions and conceptualization of chunghwa (the Central Civilization), see Wang, "Co-constructing Empire," esp. 30–3; cf. Adam Bohnet, Turning Toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2020), esp. 1–4.
6. See note 3.
7. Miguel Escobar Varela, Theater as Data: Computational Journeys into Theater Research (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021), 1. See also W.E. Underwood, "A Genealogy of Distant Reading," Digital Humanities Quarterly 11, no. 2 (2017), accessed July 30, 2022, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/2/000317/000317.html.
8. See, for instance, Paul Vierthaler, "Analyzing Printing Trends in Late Imperial China Using Large Bibliometric Datasets," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 76, no. 1 (2016): 87–133, doi:10.1353/jas.2016.0005; Hilde De Weerdt, Brent Ho, Allon Wagner, Jiyan Qiao, and Mingkin Chu, "Is There a Faction in This List?," Journal of Chinese History 4, no. 2 (2020): 347–89, doi:10.1017/jch.2020.16.
9. See Javier Cha, "Big Data and the Future of the (Korean) Humanities," Korean Studies (2022): this volume; cf. Benjamin Schmidt, "Do Digital Humanists Need to Understand Algorithms?" Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, accessed July 30, 2022, https://benschmidt.org/publication/schmidt_digital_2016/.
10. Literary Sinitic was only one of the many important languages in both China and Korea; concerning how literary Sinitic "is hybridized with the vernacular realities of Chosŏn society," see Si Nae Park, The Korean Vernacular Story: Telling Tales of Contemporary Chosŏn in Sinographic Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020).
11. Liu Zhen 劉貞 ed., Xinkan leibian liju sanchang wenxuan 類編歷舉三場文選 [Newly Published Categorized Collection of Examination [Questions and Responses] of Three Parts] (printed, 1340s), Seikado Museum and Library, xin ji. Cf. Yin, "Rhetorical Curriculum," 54.
12. Liu Xu 劉昫, Jiu Tang shu 舊唐書 [Old Tang History] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 13.365; Sima Guang 司馬光, Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑 [Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009), 235.7688–9.
13. Yin, "Rhetorical Curriculum," 53–7. Cf. Stephen Owen, The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 261. For Tang appointment edicts, see Shoufu Yin, "Redefining Reciprocity: Appointment Edict and Political Thought in Medieval China," Journal of the History of Ideas 83, no. 4 (2022): 533–54.
14. Yin, "Rhetorical Curriculum," 1–14. Cf. Hou Meizhen 侯美珍, "Mingdai xianghuishi zhao gao biao gongwen kaoshi xilun 明代鄉會試詔誥表公文考試析論" [An Analysis of the Composition of Decrees, Edicts, and Memorials in the Ming Provincial and Metropolitan Examinations], Guowen xuebao 62 (2017): 125–58; Wada Masahiro 和田正広, Min Shin kanryōsei no kenkyū 明清官僚制の研究 [A Study of Ming and Qing Bureaucracy] (Tōkyō: Kyūko Shoin, 2002), 36–9.
15. Hou, "Mingdai xianghuishi zhao gao biao;" see also Li Zhuyin 李竺穎, "Mingdai xiang hui shi erchang biaowen yanjiu 明代鄉會試二場表文研究" [A Study of Memorial Writing in Ming Provincial and Metropolitan Examinations] (MPhil diss., Guoli chenggong daxue, 2018).
16. Imitative drafting of official documents was also an important part in the civil service examination in Đại Việt. See Chen Wen 陳文, Yuenan keju zhidu yanjiu 越南科舉制度研究 [A Study of the Civil Service Examination in Vietnam] (Beijing: Shang wu yin shu guan, 2015), 45.
17. Liu Zhen, ed., Sanchang wenxuan, preface; Song Lian 宋濂 et al., Yuan shi 元史 [History of the Yuan] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976), 81.2018.
18. Hou, "Mingdai xianghuishi zhao gao biao;" Yŏng-ho Ch'oe, The Civil Examinations and the Social Structure in the Early Yi Dynasty Korea: 1392–1600 (Seoul: The Korean Research Center, 1987); Yi Sŏng-mu, Han'guk ŭi kwagŏ chedo 韓國의科舉制度 [Civil Service Examination in Korea] (Sŏul: Han'guk Ilbo, 1976).
20. For a historical narrative of the Yuan and Ming world order, see Timothy Brook, Great State: China and the World (London: Profile Books, 2019).
22. Gloria Yuzhuo Wang, "koreanDB2.0.py," accessed July 30, 2022, https://github.com/etherealgloriaw/Korean-DB-Scraping.
23. Ibid.
24. Liu Kangzhi 劉康祉, Shikuangzhai quanji 識匡齋全集 [Complete Collection of the Study of Knowing Rectification], juan 16, accessed digitally via ZGGJ.
25. Min Inpaek 閔仁伯, T'aech'ŏn chip 苔泉集 [Collection of Mr. T'aech'ŏn (Moss Spring)], a059_015d, accessed digitally via HGMJ.
27. Concerning the biao/p'yo 表 and jian/chŏn 箋, see Wang, "Coconstructing Empire," 67–73.
29. For the life and career of Cho Ch'anhan 趙纘韓, who remains largely understudied even in Korea, see Pak Chŏngmin, "Chosŏn chunggi sŏin'gye muninŭi chŏngch'ijŏk pulman'gwa munhakchŏk taeŭng 조선중기 서인계 문인의 정치적 불만과 문학 적 대응" [The Complaints and Literary Response of Seoin Writers in the Middle of the Joseon Dynasty], Tongbanghan munhak 63 (2015): 217–46; Seung B. Kye, "In the Shadow of the Father: Court Opposition and the Reign of King Kwanghae in Early Seventeenth-Century Choson Korea" (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2006), esp. 175.
31. The temporality embedded in different prompts has drawn the attention of the Jesuits in China. See Nicolas Trigault, De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas (Lugduni: Sumptibus Horatii Cardon, 1615), 41.
33. Kang Sŏkki 姜碩期, Wŏltang chip 月塘集 [Collection of Mr. Wŏltang (Moon Pond)], a086_367b, accessed via HGMJ.
35. One should not overlook, however, the development of the Practical Learning (Sirhak) in Korea over the long seventeenth century. See James B. Palais, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty (Seattle: Washington University Press, 2014), 5–11.
36. Ma Shiqi 馬世奇, Danning ju wenji 澹寧居文集 [Collection of Quiet and Peaceful Dwelling] (printed, ca. 1644), juan 2, accessed via ZGGJ.
37. See Zhang Tingyu 張廷玉 et al., Ming shi 明史 [History of the Ming] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 271.6954; Wang Yuanchong, Remaking the Chinese Empire: Manchu-Korean Relations, 1616–1911 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 21–49.
38. For the historical background, see JaHyun Kim Haboush, The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).
42. Shoufu Yin, "Speaking on Behalf of the Korean King: Rhetorical Education and Political Imagination in Early Modern China," manuscript under review.
43. On the leitmotif of women's integrity, see Kim Haboush, The Great East Asian War, esp. 144–5.
44. For the significance of the male authors writing in the voice of women, see Wai-yee Li, Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014).
45. For a fabulous platform for working with the digitized veritable records, see Hyeok Hweon Kang and Michelle Suh, "Silloker: Towards a Digital Turn in Premodern Korean Studies," Korean Studies (2022): this volume.
46. Jeff Langenderfer and Steven W. Kopp, "Which Way to the Revolution? The Consequences of Database Protection as a New Form of Intellectual Property," Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 22, no. 1 (2003), 83–5. Cf. Cha, "Big Data."
47. See Lisa Blaydes et al., "Mirrors for Princes and Sultans: Advice on the Art of Governance in the Medieval Christian and Islamic Worlds," The Journal of Politics 80, no. 4 (2018): 1150–67, doi:10.1086/699246; Justin Grimmer, "A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts: Measuring Expressed Agendas in Senate Press Releases," Political Analysis 18, no. 1 (2010): 1–35, doi:10.1093/pan/mpp034.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to Javier Cha and Barbara Wall for organizing the Copenhagen Workshop, which made it all possible. I am thankful for the valuable suggestions, support, and assistance provided by our fellow participants, particularly Hyeok Hweon Kang, Jamie Jungmin Yoo, Jing Hu, Guy Shababo, Liora Sarfati, and Cheehyung Harrison Kim. I thank Gloria Yuzhuo Wang for her research assistantship and Zhaokun Xin for his kind encouragement.