Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing

4. Narrating Faith, Resistance, and Healing

4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . narrating faith, resistance, and healing P’ansori’s thematic concerns are often oversimpli¤ed as a dichotomy between the folk and the Neo-Confucian. Underneath the dyadic simplicity lies a complex network of themes, ideologies, and applications. From the canonized ¤ve narratives to the newly composed texts, p’ansori consistently narrates faith, resistance , and healing in a changing context. This chapter discusses the thematic continuity across old and new texts as made manifest in performance.· · · Spiritual Background · · · The conventional wisdom is that the “¤ve p’ansori narratives” (p’ansori obat ’ang) evolved as a set of oral texts preaching Confucian morality. The situation is much more complicated. Lying beneath the surface is a different set of dynamics : The secular and the human are juxtaposed against the sacred and the saintly, and the crude and the sarcastic face off against the re¤ned and the serious. This juxtapositionhas beenviewed as a thematiccontradictionindicating the onsetof modernity inKorea: While the surface motifs uphold the codeof Confucian morality , “con¶ictamong the dramatic characters betrays the inside story, the social awareness that struggles to be freed of the medieval social bondage.”1 What does “medieval social bondage” mean? Does it refer to Confucian social mores or their application? In the Ch’unhyang narrative, for example, the protagonist does not lash out against the Confucian golden rules but against their abuse. Chiding her antagonist with their correct application, Ch’unhyang volunteers the orthodox emulation of a chaste Confucian wife despite her impunity as a kisaeng ’s daughter. Instead of celebrating her emancipation, she begs to enter the bondage of chastity, for “how can loyalty and ¤liality, or womanly virtue, differ betweenhighbornandlow?”2 Ch’unhyangsuffersabattlewithher owncommit- . . . . . . Narrating Faith, Resistance, and Healing : 115 ment to the life of pining, grieving, and endless waiting, as portrayed in the song “I Must Go” (Kalkkabuda). (Chungmori) “I’d die this very instant and become a swallow, and in the easterly spring wind, Under my love’s eaves I would build a nest and linger. At night, when I am with my love, I will share all my feelings and loving memories. What to do, what to do, without him what am I to do!” All alone, she weeps. As the pain intensi¤es, Ch’unhyang reveals her death wish; the physical suffering Magistrate Pyôn in¶icts on her seems trivial in comparison. To the magistrate , Ch’unhyang’srefusal to serve himisachallenge to hisauthoritypunishable by death: She de¤es the social order by “feigning” a chaste wife despite her abject class. Ch’unhyang manages to antagonize her commoner associates by “treating us as ignorant country bumpkins and posing as a lady, all after she got hitched to a yangban boyfriend.”3 Paradoxically, her execution can be seen as mercy, allowing her to escape the pain and die as a chaste wife. Rather than lingering in the sociological realm, the protagonists’ challenges are psychologically, ethically, and spiritually internalized, for their battles are as muchagainst their own human frailtyasagainst theevilsofsocietyand much less against the existing social principles. In fact, their total commitment to those principles—be it ¤delity to one man or ¤lial piety at the expense of one’s own life—places them at odds with their own frailty. The numerous lyrical songs from the narratives poignantly recount their deeply introspective searches for inner strength in perilous and uncertain times. Take Shim Ch’ông as another example . According to social expectations, she is not the right gender to carry ¤lial piety to the extreme. Daughters “may be praised for acts of ¤lial piety, but they do not bear the same responsibilities as their brothers.”4 Abandoning the convenience of the accepted social arrangement, the child Shim Ch’ông adopts natural bondage, beginning by begging in place of her father. (Chungmori) Father, listen to me. Cha Ro [Zi Lu]5 was a wise man, Carried a sack of rice to his parents across one hundred leagues, Sun U’s [Chun Yu] daughter, Cheyông [Tirong], to save her father, imprisoned in Nagyang [Luoyang], . . . . . . 116 : From Straw Mat to Proscenium and Back Sold herself for his release. A crow that ¶ies through an empty forest, At dusk, knows how to recompense its parent. We are humans, most certainly, Are we not supposed to be better than beasts? (Chông Kwônjin version) On the night of her departure to Indangsu, Shim Ch’ông bitterly bemoans the fate that takes her away...