CONFUCIAN TRADITION IN KOREA

Both as a political tool and as a cultural value, Confucianism had profound impacts on Korean society over a very long period. Korea’s initial exposure to Confucianism was in the second century BCE, when Han dynasty China set up four commanderies in northern Korea and Manchuria. The Han colonizers employed the Confucian administration system inscribed in literary Chinese to rule their Korean subjects; Koreans learned and emulated this system to transform their tribal federations into centralized states. The ruling elites also began to use literary Chinese not only for record keeping in governance but also for communication among themselves and with Chinese officials. This situation fundamentally contributed to the symbolic power of Confucianism because the Confucian classics were what the elites studied to master this foreign writing system. The subsequently established Three Kingdoms, however, showed only limited influences from Confucian culture, mostly in the political sector. Instead, Buddhism, to which the Three Kingdoms converted from the fourth to sixth centuries, governed the lives of people across society. This syncretic tendency continued during the Koryŏ dynasty, when Buddhism, compounded with some indigenous belief systems, wielded substantial sociopolitical authority beyond its religious clout. However, Confucianism in Koryŏ had developed into a more sophisticated political ideology. The dynastic founder, Wang Kŏn (877–943), elevated his political authority not by claiming divine birth, as ancient Korean rulers had done, but with the Mandate of Heaven (Ch’ŏnmyŏng) derived from the Confucian classical tradition: the ruler earned or lost the Mandate depending on whether or not his own moral virtue accorded with the will of Heaven. Moreover, the governmental system was modeled after that of Tang China; the state began to recruit officials through the civil service examination system from 958. While emulating the Tang notion of the ideal man, Korean elites in this period cultivated and refined their tastes in literary arts and sensitivity to aesthetics. Despite a setback during military rule from 1170 to 1258, Confucianism continued to permeate Koryŏ society as the effective means of statecraft and set of exemplary cultural values. Remarkably, Neo-Confucianism was introduced into Korea during the Mongol domination of Koryŏ from 1258 to 1356. Easy access to the Yuan capital, Beijing, and increased interactions with Chinese intellectuals allowed Korean scholars to learn about their metaphysical inquiries into human nature and its relationship to cosmological order. In the mid-fourteenth century, when the Mongols withdrew from East Asia, the elites steeped in this new scholarship called for the total transformation of Korea into a Confucian normative society matching their moral vision. This group allied with a powerful general, Yi Sŏnggye (1335–1408), to topple the Koryŏ and establish a new dynasty: the Chosŏn.²

Although Confucianism itself was not new to early Chosŏn elites, the political configuration used to implement the Confucian lifestyle as a social order was unprecedented. This new social program was not necessarily congruous with many Korean indigenous customs, which undergirded the strong and persistent sociopolitical influence of aristocratic pedigrees. The hereditary aristocracy had maintained an incredibly durable and prolonged social domination in Korean history since the Silla period, irrespective of the intermittent dynastic changes.³ The majority of elite families of the early Chosŏn period had carried over their political domination from the Koryŏ dynasty.⁴ This led to contention and substantial compromise between the Confucian norms and the indigenous customs. For instance, the egalitarian meritocracy that the Confucian political apparatuses instilled was toned down, and emphasis was placed on hierarchy in the Confucian social order, to accommodate the interests of aristocrats. The effect was an “aristocratic bureaucracy.”⁵ Similarly, the equal emphasis given to bilateral pedigrees in the Korean aristocracy made it difficult to carry out patrilineal social restructuring at once, as the Confucian ritual classics ordained. The compromise family structure of the late Chosŏn period thus preserved the traces and remnants of uxorilocal marriage customs. To instill the Confucian way of life, the Chosŏn state had to implement forceful legal measures and elaborate ritual programs from the beginning of the dynasty. The Confucianization of Korean society was an arduous and deliberate intellectual and social process that took more than two centuries.⁶

This laborious process required Korean scholars to acquire broad and profound understanding of Neo-Confucian theories. Thus they badly needed the most up-to-date scholarship and books from Ming dynasty (1368–1644) China. The discordant diplomatic relationship with the Ming, however, disrupted academic transmission during the early Chosŏn period.⁷ Since the Ming dynasty was established in 1368, the first emperor, Hongwu, had openly displayed his distrust toward Korea mostly due to its close political, cultural, and ethnic ties with the Mongols, who continued to pose a security threat on the Chinese northern border.⁸ Although Hongwu endorsed the new Korean dynasty by conferring the title of Chosŏn, his suspicion had never fully dissipated.⁹ The first serious contention between the Ming and the Chosŏn dynasties took place in 1395 due to a breach of protocol in a Chosŏn diplomatic document presented to Hongwu. Because he considered the diplomatic protocols used in it insolent, he detained the envoys and ordered the Chosŏn court to arrest Chŏng Tojŏn, who had drafted the document.¹⁰ Although this conflict was resolved through the literary talent of Kwŏn Kŭn (1352–1409),¹¹ the Ming suspicion of the Chosŏn was not completely dispelled by the end of Hongwu’s reign and beyond.¹²

As a suzerain of the Chinese tributary system, the Ming had an obligation to disseminate Confucian civilization to other tributary states to illuminate their morals in the right ways.¹³ Diplomatic friction, however, made the Ming court reluctant to share its cultural and academic resources with Korea. In 1433, for instance, King Sejong asked the Ming emperor to allow Chosŏn students to study in Ming state schools. The Ming emperor did not permit this and instead granted the Chosŏn court some basic Confucian classics, including the Five Classics, Four Books, and The Great Compendium of Nature and Principle (Ch. Xingli daquan).¹⁴ This was in stark contrast to the Ming court’s accommodation of the Ryūkyū scholars studying in China in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹⁵ Moreover, although the Ming court granted some books to Chosŏn, it was wary of sharing the most up-to-date scholarship. One sillok record in 1433, for instance, states that it forbade foreign envoys to bring any books and medical items back to their home country without its permission.¹⁶

The assignments for the Chosŏn envoys dispatched to Beijing in 1435 to celebrate the Ming emperor’s birthday vividly show how desperate the Chosŏn court was to collect Chinese books, despite this restriction:

1. The Great Compendium of Four Books and The Great Compendium of Five Classics edited during the reign of King T’aejong (r. 1400–1418) are already outdated. When these books were published in China, we in Chosŏn did not know of their existence. We have received books from the Ming emperor several times.… However, there is no single book that illuminates the erudite details of Confucian principle. The Ming court must have published books expounding these details, which have not been transmitted to our country. Please ask the Chinese officials about new books and try to buy them.…
2. The study of Confucian principles is manifested in The Great Compendium of Four Books, The Great Compendium of Five Classics, and The Great Compendium of Nature and Principle. The study of history, however, has been based on past scholarly works. Therefore the writings of recent scholars are generally better than those of their predecessors. So the helpful books [recently published in China] should be brought to our country.… When you buy books, make sure to buy two copies of the same title just in case one is lost.…
3. Please ask the officials in the Ming court if it is possible to print, with woodblocks, a complete set of Confucian classics available in Beijing, if we provide our own paper and ink.
4. The envoys who returned from the Ming last time delivered the news that The Great Compendium of Emperor Yongle (Yongle daquan) could not be published immediately due to its copious number of volumes. So please find out if these volumes have been published and what their contents are.…
5. … Find out if it is possible to bring Chinese type castings to our country.¹⁷

Collecting contemporary Chinese scholarship through buying or inquiring about new books held vital significance for envoy missions.¹⁸ This was the only access to Chinese scholarship.

The isolation from contemporary Ming scholarship led Korean scholars to the immensely painstaking task of understanding the complexities of Confucian literature on their own. Chosŏn scholars delved into Song Neo-Confucian literature, and this taxing process made their interpretations of Neo-Confucianism distinct from that of contemporary China.¹⁹ By the sixteenth century, Chosŏn Neo-Confucianism traced its provenance directly to Song China.²⁰

HOW T’OEGYE READ ZHU XI’S (1130–1200) LETTERS

Given this situation, it is no surprise that T’oegye and Yulgok, the two prominent masters of the sixteenth century, are generally regarded as the most significant figures who shaped the Confucian tradition of Korea. T’oegye’s academic agenda, in particular, reflects this precarious condition in which scholars attempted to make the Song Neo-Confucian tradition comprehensible and more accessible. The emphasis on the inheritance of Song academic tradition led Chosŏn scholars to choose a radical lifestyle prescribed in Neo-Confucian texts. Starting in the sixteenth century, embodying Confucian learning in everyday life was widely popular among the literati. T’oegye initiated the local academy movement in rural areas in the 1540s. Academy education encouraged scholars to devote themselves to the Confucian way of life through serious scholarship and elaborate ritual practices. In addition to offering this social setting to facilitate the Neo-Confucian lifestyle, T’oegye also paid significant attention to finding the best writing genre for making complex Neo-Confucian discourse accessible to beginning scholars. T’oegye obtained a copy of The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings (Chuja chŏnso) in this period.²¹ In the course of reading it, he realized that scholarly texts written in discrete genres generated completely different scholarly and pedagogical effects. In particular, he found the letters included there useful for teaching purposes. The scholarly content in the letters was embedded in very specific contexts of everyday life, which perfectly echoed Chosŏn scholars’ efforts to carry out Neo-Confucian moral principles in their daily practices. In other words, the senders and receivers of letters activated academic issues in epistolary space due to the specific contexts of their correspondence.

T’oegye meticulously edited, annotated, and anthologized Zhu Xi’s letters, which are included in The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings. He completed his anthology in 1556, titled it The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters (Chujasŏ chŏryo), and praised its effectiveness as the threshold to Neo-Confucian scholarship.²² In the preface, written in 1558, T’oegye explains how he came to read Zhu Xi’s writings and why he chose to edit and anthologize his letters:

The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings had barely been circulated in our country. In 1543, King Chungjong [r. 1506–1544] ordered the Office of Editorial Review (Kyosŏgwan) to publish this collection. Thus, I came to know of its existence and acquired this collection.… [T]he words in it have flavor, and the meanings in it are infinite. In particular, I have learned more in reading letters [than in reading other parts]. As for the whole content of this collection, it is hard to get its gist because it is as broad as the earth [in terms of quantity] and as deep as the sea [in terms of meanings]. As to letters, however, [Zhu Xi] made different explanations to different people according to their innate personal qualities and degrees of scholarship. This is similar to applying different medicines to different symptoms and measuring various things in a scale.²³

T’oegye nurtured a keen sense of the different effects of disparate genres while reading various pieces included in the collection. In particular, the reciprocity between the sender and the addressee embedded in the genre of letters caught his attention as a way to facilitate readers’ understanding of complex Neo-Confucian theories. The author’s estimation of the intellectual abilities of different recipients generated a variety of narratives on the same scholarly issues, which was not possible in other writing genres. T’oegye emphasizes the advantages of letters for studying Neo-Confucianism by comparing them with other genres:

Someone said: “How can [reading] classics written by sages and texts written by the virtuous scholars not be substantial learning? Also, all commentaries [on Neo-Confucian classics annotated by Zhu Xi] are characterized by sincere learning. In that case, why are you prone to read [Zhu Xi’s] letters only? How can your learning be so prejudiced and parochial?” I answered: “Your questions sound plausible, but they are not right. In general, people can progress in their scholarship only when they find the very key to learning and when they are encouraged by it. There are numerous talented scholars who make their best efforts to [memorize and] recite Zhu Xi’s discourse. However, there is no one who fully gets across his learning, and this results from failing to discover the very clue. The words in these letters reflect how teachers and students discussed and illuminated the pith of learning and how they encouraged each other. So letters are different from other writings, which discuss scholarly issues in dry tones. There is no letter that does not discover people’s minds and hearts and encourage them [to work hard on Neo-Confucian scholarship].²⁴

Whereas the questioner underscored the significance of the authors’ intentions in discussing the contents of texts, T’oegye suggests that readers focus on learning in different ways by reading writings in different genres. T’oegye’s reading of Zhu Xi’s letters led him to notice that the choice of genre could generate entirely different reading effects from the same content. In other words, T’oegye considered that the mode of writing governs the meaning of texts. This new approach drew on T’oegye’s own experience of Zhu Xi’s works as a reader. With his anthology of Zhu’s letters, he stood within and for the audience he addressed, just as this anthology functioned as a representative synecdoche for the whole collection of Zhu’s writings. T’oegye, as the anthologist, exemplified the reading public rather than instructing or shepherding his readers from the vantage point of an advanced scholar.²⁵

This quotation also reveals that T’oegye paid special attention to the specific contexts in which the given correspondences took place. Zhu Xi’s versatile narratives as a letter writer to his disciples cum addressees invigorated scholarly discourses that could easily have fallen into “dry tones.” This capture of scholarly practices in everyday contexts enriched the pedagogical effects of reading letters because readers could envision how Neo-Confucian concepts had been originally created and developed in the interactions between the master and disciples. Moreover, the deliberation on everyday practices discussed in Zhu Xi’s letters invested the daily life of letter readers themselves with increased significance, as they realized that learning was embodied in their seemingly trivial conversations and behaviors. The original contexts of correspondence thus maintained an ineluctable relationship with readers’ daily practices, which subsequently affected their modes of reading and writing letters.

Here I find the debate on the contextualist approach in modern intellectual history useful to illuminate T’oegye’s notion about epistolary contexts. Some problematized the contextualist approach as a method in the history of ideas because it ends up subscribing to the circular argument that the social contexts affect the meaning of texts, and in turn, the texts affect the formation of the social contexts. Instead, historians have to consider the contexts as the scope of meanings of the texts in the given societies rather than giving totalizing power to social contexts in historical studies.²⁶ If we borrow this critique, T’oegye seems to have fallen into the fallacy of treating contexts as absolute determinants of textual meaning instead of regarding them as a framework for deciding “conventionally recognizable meanings” in the given society.²⁷ In his understanding, the conservation of original contexts distinguished Zhu Xi’s letters from his academic writings in other genres. However, some point out that philosophers of certain periods put forward their ideas not simply to their contemporaries but also for audiences in the future.²⁸ The authorial intentions could transcend the contextual constraints at the moment of writing. Although Zhu Xi’s letters were originally sent to specific addressees, they appealed to Chosŏn scholars because scrutinizing the letters allowed them to master Song Neo-Confucian theories without consulting contemporary Chinese scholars. They were “readdressed” to Chosŏn readers through the process of anthologization and publication as books.²⁹ Korean scholars were drawn to Zhu Xi’s letters several centuries later for both their capacity to reenact original contexts and their applicability in explicating the sociopolitical situation of the Chosŏn. T’oegye’s emphasis on specific contexts in Zhu Xi’s letters embodied the intention of Chosŏn scholars, catering to the epistemological desire to acknowledge the provenance of new ideas as well as the practical need to establish a new self-identity with this academic agenda.

Through success in this academic endeavor, Chosŏn scholars could play down their isolation from and even claim superiority to contemporary Ming intellectuals. The confidence that they better understood Zhu Xi’s scholarship, moreover, led them to criticize Ming scholarly culture’s deviations from Song Neo-Confucianism. T’oegye, for instance, criticized the prevalence of Wang Yangming’s (1472–1528) and Chen Xianzhang’s (1428–1500) scholarship, which emphasized the spontaneity of human intuition instead of rigorous learning and serious reflection. He summarized their view as a pseudo-Confucianism masked by the study of Chan Buddhism.³⁰ Denouncing this academic contamination enabled Korean scholars to consider themselves the authentic inheritors of orthodox Neo-Confucianism. T’oegye thus attempted to create an academic genealogy that directly connected Korean scholarly culture to Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian tradition. He wrote The Comprehensive Record of the Study of Principle (Ihak t’ongnok), an edited collection of brief biographies of Zhu Xi school scholars in the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods.³¹ In his narrative, Song Neo-Confucian learning did not necessarily represent Chinese virtues but comprised common cultural and intellectual values shared by all those under the influence of literary Chinese classical tradition. For T’oegye, the best understanding of Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism was to be accomplished in Chosŏn Korea. To achieve this daunting task, scholars should master his letters as the major scholarly texts.

ANTHOLOGIZING LETTERS FOR PUBLICATION

Besides underscoring the merit of letters in learning Neo-Confucian scholarship, T’oegye pointed out that the sheer number of letters included in The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings does not allow scholars to easily master them. He supposed that readers might get fed up with the copious volumes of this collection, as they could not finish studying it within one or two years. The typical methods for managing abundant texts from antiquity to the present day involve selecting, sorting, and storing by social actors in diverse combinations for various purposes with multiple technologies.³² T’oegye also focused on condensing and cutting the letters to a manageable size. He suggested that scholars read his anthology first and then study the whole collection, depending on their own abilities.³³ In the book culture of early modern Europe, anthologies and abridgments function as significant means to help ideas “trickle down.” These truncated versions made lengthy and complex texts accessible for wider readerships, including the less educated and economically disadvantaged.³⁴ T’oegye’s anthology, in a similar vein, enabled even beginning students to easily experience Zhu Xi’s scholarship.

T’oegye further claimed that some questions and answers between Zhu Xi and his disciples offered less inspiration than others. For this reason, he excluded letters that he considered improper for his anthology. This selection process excluded about 700 letters out of around 1,700, which originally amount to forty-eight fascicles.³⁵ In some cases, he selected parts from several different letters that discuss the same issues, then combined them into a single text in order to form a coherent narrative.³⁶ He also cut out the contents of selected letters that did not support his editorial intention. The readers of this anthology were intended to read what T’oegye had included and not to read what he had excluded.³⁷ Most of the deleted parts are introductory and ending passages inquiring after the addressee’s health or letting the addressee know how the sender is getting along.³⁸ Removing these epistolary formalities stripped the letters of epistolarity, which confirmed and reinforced the reciprocal intimacy and mutual longing between correspondents.³⁹ Although T’oegye emphasized the contextual specificities as the key pedagogical advantage of letters, his editing process, intended to fit letters into books, removed them. Ironically, third-party readers could access the correspondence more comfortably when the epistolary contexts were neutralized to accommodate their different reading conditions.

T’oegye followed the structure of The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings by categorizing letters according to different addressees rather than rearranging them according to topics or chronological order. He also added explanatory notes at the beginning of each anthology volume about people who appeared in it. Moreover, he made notes at the beginning or end of each letter regarding its content. T’oegye also interposed his annotations on terms and events between the lines of the original letters. In principle, they answer potential readers’ questions without interrogating either author or reader.⁴⁰ T’oegye’s annotations at the beginning of each volume and notes at the beginning and end of each letter, however, made him the only source of knowledge about the text for readers.⁴¹ These invasive annotations and the extensive editing evoked concern about the distortion of textual meanings even among his close collaborators.

T’oegye also punctuated Zhu Xi’s letters. This process could result in readers interpreting the letters differently because the meaning of the same text in classical Chinese, which originally did not bear punctuation marks, could differ depending on how readers added them. In a letter to Yu Sŏngnyong (1542–1607) in 1566 upon the republication of this book in Chŏngju by Yu’s father, Yu Chungnyŏng (1515–1573), T’oegye explained that he punctuated Zhu Xi’s letters to better elucidate their meanings. He thought that his punctuation would be of help in deciphering ambiguous and difficult parts.⁴² By annotating and punctuating Zhu Xi’s letters rather than simply anthologizing them, T’oegye himself stood out in this anthology. His paratextual voice occupied “the threshold of interpretation,”⁴³ and readers could arrive at the original texts only through it.

However, T’oegye seems to have been anxious about his voice standing out in the paratextual space. For him, the annotations should testify to his intellectual inheritance of Zhu Xi’s tradition rather than indicating his distance from it. In his letter to Hwang Chunnyang (1517–1563) written in 1561, he asked Hwang to write an epilogue for this anthology to clarify his editorial stance as well as to share editorial responsibilities.⁴⁴ However, this emphasis on the seamless connection with Zhu Xi was not compatible with what T’oegye put forward as the advantage of Zhu Xi’s letters. T’oegye’s effort to reenact the original contexts by reading letters, after all, evinced the temporal and discursive distance from Zhu Xi’s period. Whether intentionally or not, T’oegye’s usage of paratextual elements further dictated the readers’ interpretation by setting the purpose of reading this anthology as only mastering Neo-Confucian principles.

FORMS AND MEANINGS OF TEXTS

T’oegye could read Zhu Xi’s letters as scholarly texts in part because the letters were in book form. T’oegye located them in The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings rather than identifying them in their original separate format for communication. The letters had already been decontextualized from the original contexts of their production and recontextualized to fit into this collection of diverse writings. The readers’ role was also amplified because it took cooperation between compilers and readers to constitute the consistent meaning of a collection containing various writings. Thus, we have to take into account the intertextuality of various writings in different genres in order to unravel T’oegye’s interpretation of the letters. The process of compiling different texts as components of a collection silenced conflicting authorial intentions imposed upon each text in favor of the coherence of the whole because the name of the author predominates over the peculiarities of different genres and disparate contexts. Therefore, the editorial intention of The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings affected how T’oegye read Zhu Xi’s letters.

T’oegye’s reading strategy reflected the sociocultural implications that book reading had delivered in the Chosŏn. The writing collections of Korean scholars before this period included very few letters, if any, with no systematic way of organizing this genre. In many cases, letters were included in miscellaneous writings along with works in other genres rather than in a separate section. Thus, it must have been a unique experience for T’oegye to read the letters in book form. Moreover, for early Chosŏn literati, reading books was exclusively connected to the act of learning. When T’oegye encountered Zhu Xi’s letters that way, their meaning was already geared toward academic interpretation. T’oegye as a reader channeled the meanings of these texts to fit his purposes. Just as Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton show in their study of Gabriel Harvey’s reading of Livy, T’oegye’s scholarly reading of Zhu Xi’s letters was clearly goal oriented and active rather than reactive to the contents.⁴⁵ Letters delivered completely different discursive connotations before and after being published in a book. The very same letter might be classified in different genres, depending on the material form in which it appeared. The shift of textual forms for the same content did not simply effect a physical changeover but also altered the text’s semantic and functional values. Taking a book form always entailed a series of orders set up to interpret, understand, and put to use its contents.⁴⁶ Forms assuredly affect the meanings of texts rather than merely acting as different vessels conveying the same contents.⁴⁷

This new reading experience also shaped the ways Korean scholars related their letters to the books that they published. After T’oegye’s compilation, the writing collections of Chosŏn scholars began to include letters both copiously and systematically.⁴⁸ When T’oegye’s works were published as a collection in 1610, it included more than one thousand letters as a separate section (sŏ). This shows a changed perception of letters among scholars in T’oegye’s circle, compared to the writing collections of earlier scholars or their contemporaries. For instance, the writing collection of Yulgok, whose academic legacy matches that of T’oegye, includes only 139 letters in spite of the meticulous publication process by his pupils.⁴⁹ This clearly demonstrates that letters held special meaning for T’oegye school scholars.

Ironically, although T’oegye gave Zhu Xi’s letters credit for their sensitivity to context depending on the diverse concerns and different abilities of various addressees, T’oegye distanced these letters even further from their original contexts while anthologizing, editing, annotating, and punctuating them. This transformation of letters into books redefined the expected readership of letter correspondence. Correspondence came to include the possibility of letters being read by third-party readers, in addition to the original addressees. This change also altered the attitude of letter writers, as they had to consider such “hidden readers.”

READING LETTERS FOR SELF-CULTIVATION

The academic uses of Zhu Xi’s letters also changed T’oegye’s perception about the functions of his own letters. T’oegye anthologized twenty-two letters of his own written between 1555 and 1560, addressed to ten different people, into a collection titled Record for Self-Reflection (Chasŏngnok), although the anthology was known to the world only after his death. As mentioned at the beginning of this volume, he revisited the letters he had drafted from time to time and used them as a yardstick for self-reflection.⁵⁰ He expressed concern about his forgetfulness regarding what he had stated in his letters and discrepancies between his words and behaviors.⁵¹ This is significant because self-reflection for T’oegye meant the continuous recontextualization of what he had already expressed in his letters.

The letters included in this collection mostly discuss the significance of applying scholarly principles to everyday life, the gradual achievement of Confucian scholarship, and reconciliation between holding official positions and dedicating oneself to scholarship and the meanings of Neo-Confucian concepts such as mind-and-heart (sim) and righteousness (ŭi). The letters’ contents regarding self-reflection emphasize the embodiment of Neo-Confucian scholarship in everyday practices; likewise, these letters also should have been embedded in the very specific contexts of T’oegye’s daily life. The practice of writing letters thus had two implications for T’oegye. On the one hand, senders write letters to deliver their messages to addressees; on the other, and at the same time, they write them as memoranda addressed to themselves to regulate their own behaviors.

The dual roles of letter writers as both senders and future addressees of their own letters might have led them to preserve copies, based upon the possibility of multiple uses of the same letters for various purposes over a period of time. In other words, T’oegye took into account the noncommunicative application of letters from the start, when he wrote them for communication. This versatility of letters fostered the culture of rereading and recontextualizing them, which defies the assumption of secrecy between the sender and the addressee. Letters in the Chosŏn period, in this way, perched on the ambiguous boundary between private communication and public writing.

Although the letters included in Record for Self-Reflection reveal discursive integrity and topical consistency, T’oegye’s selection process distorted the original contexts in which the letters were written and read, focusing on the discursive ties among unrelated letters. All the letters in this collection except one are replies to other scholars’ inquiries about the methods of learning or the meanings of Neo-Confucian concepts. The exception, which is the paper appended to T’oegye’s letter addressed to Ki Taesŭng (1527–1572), does not differ too much—T’oegye counseled Ki by offering a standard for deciding whether to serve in officialdom or to retreat. These letters discuss generic issues of Neo-Confucian scholarship and conduct while answering very specific questions brought up by different senders. The shared concern about Neo-Confucian scholarship and an ethical way of life enabled T’oegye to use the different letters for his own project. Reshuffling them into an anthology gave them a new textual meaning by stripping each letter of the original contexts in which it had been written and read. T’oegye’s appropriation of letters diversified the social meaning of this genre beyond a communicative tool bound to specific contexts.

EPISTOLARY DEBATES IN CHOSŎN SCHOLARLY CULTURE

Besides reading letters for scholarly purposes, Chosŏn scholars used them to carry on long-distance discussions, which would not have been possible otherwise. Such exchanges of letters for academic discussions were not unique only to the Chosŏn period. Seneca’s moral letters to Lucillius (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium), for example, allow us to observe the most thrilling philosophical interactions in Roman history.⁵² The letters Wang Yangming exchanged with various Ming literati also figured prominently in the formation of his version of Confucian interpretations.⁵³ Among many similar cases in Korea,⁵⁴ the epistolary debate between T’oegye and Ki Taesŭng is the best known and helps us better understand the uses of letters in scholarly interactions. This epistolary debate holds significance not only because nationwide Confucians drawn into it thus formed a single interpretive community but also because two competing interpretations of the given topic bifurcated the academic schools that subsequently shaped the political topography of late Chosŏn Korea. The emphasis on the embodiment of Confucian learning in daily practices encouraged scholars to delve into the relationship between human nature (sŏng) and human emotions and/or sentiments (chŏng), which jointly form mind-and-heart (sim). Chosŏn scholars mostly agreed that human sentiments are enacted from human nature; however, they diverged in explaining the relationship between the Four Beginnings (sadan) and Seven Chŏng (ch’ilchŏng), which respectively appear in The Works of Mencius and The Book of Rites.⁵⁵ This very issue triggered heated debates between T’oegye and Ki in a series of eight letters exchanged between 1559 and 1566, known as the Four-Seven Debate. Both T’oegye and Ki understood that all chŏng originated from human nature. According to this logic, both the Four Beginnings and the Seven Chŏng belong to the grand rubric of chŏng, and they embrace both principles (i) and material forces (ki). Based upon this understanding, Ki claimed that the Four Beginnings and the Seven Chŏng cannot be separated, and the former refers to the appropriate sentiments among the latter. However, T’oegye argued that whereas the Four Beginnings could only be signified by principle, which would make the expression of chŏng always appropriate, the Seven Chŏng could be only signified by material force, which would make the expression of chŏng appropriate or inappropriate depending on the circumstances. In other words, he made the Four Beginnings an absolute moral standard for self-cultivation.

Besides the importance of the subject matter as an urgent philosophical inquiry of the period, how this debate actually developed exhibits the changed perceptions of letter writing among Korean literati. Remarkably, both T’oegye and Ki considered their correspondence not as exclusive private communication but as an open forum in which scholarly communities surrounding them would join and add input. Both collaborated with other scholars to hone their arguments by sharing their mutual correspondence. Ki openly circulated the letters and asked the opinions of prominent scholars from the early stages of the debate; Kim Inhu (1510−1560), Yi Hang (1499−1576), and No Susin (1515−1590) responded, which enriched Ki’s argument. T’oegye also discussed this issue with some of his pupils.⁵⁶ In this way, Confucian scholars came to appreciate public readership and collective authorship through exchanging letters.⁵⁷ Therefore, it was no surprise that Yulgok and Sŏng Hon (1535−1598) initiated the second round of this debate in 1572 in response to the exchange between T’oegye and Ki. The secrecy assumed between senders and addressees in their correspondence easily gave way to open access to letters in the quest for better scholarship.⁵⁸ To some degree, the letters exchanged among the Confucian literati functioned as academic periodicals, which did not exist in the Chosŏn academic environment.⁵⁹ This helped Confucians establish the tradition of free scholarly debate between master and disciple, or between senior and junior scholar.⁶⁰

At the conclusion of this debate, the scholarly community demanded the letters for academic purposes. Ki’s son, Ki Hyojŭng (d.u.), published the letters exchanged between T’oegye and Ki separately as early as 1614.⁶¹ However, as we can see from the second-round epistolary debate on the same subject between Yulgok and Sŏng Hon in 1572, the transcribed manuscripts must have been circulated among nationwide literati almost instantaneously after the original debate. Just as T’oegye’s attention to Zhu Xi’s letters elevated letters as a legitimate academic genre, the philosophical contents distinguished the letters exchanged between T’oegye and Ki from other ordinary letters conveying mundane information.

ZHU XI’S LETTERS AFTER T’OEGYE

Nowhere is it mentioned to what extent T’oegye’s anthology of Zhu Xi’s letters was distributed in the Chosŏn scholarly scene. Because there is no evidence that books were commercially produced in sixteenth-century Chosŏn, we cannot assume that it was disseminated through markets. Considering that T’oegye lectured on this book several times to his disciples after its completion in 1556, however, it is certain that scholars under his tutelage read it extensively. Although Hwang Chunnyang had initially published the anthology in 1561 in Sŏngju, publication continued in Haeju and P’yŏngyang up to 1567. Yu Chungnyŏng republished it in 1567 when he was the magistrate of Chŏngju in northern Korea. The version published in 1575 at Ch’ŏn’gok Academy was the first to include T’oegye’s preface, which was only discovered after his death. Starting with this version, the title of the anthology was also changed from The Abbreviated Essence of Hoeam’s Letters (Hoeamsŏ chŏryo) to The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters. Until the early twentieth century, this work was published eight times in total; it was further transmitted to Japan and has been published four times there since 1656.⁶²

As T’oegye elevated Zhu Xi’s letters to major Confucian texts by highlighting their academic and pedagogical significance, scholars under his influence closely read the letters in their Confucian studies. For instance, Yi Tŏkhong (1541–1596) recorded that “the master [T’oegye] guided his students to read in the sequence of Elementary Learning, Great Learning, The Classic of Mind and Heart, Analects of Confucius, The Works of Mencius, Zhu Xi’s Letters, and other classics.”⁶³ T’oegye claimed that beginning scholars should read Zhu Xi’s letters, as these writings would immediately inspire them to implement Confucian principles in their daily interactions.⁶⁴ Kim Sŏngil, in a similar vein, pointed out that T’oegye consulted this anthology whenever he received difficult questions from scholars.⁶⁵ Zhu Xi’s letters offered actual examples of how Confucian theories were put to use. These accounts by T’oegye’s disciples show that he made use of the letters to apply abstract Confucian principles to everyday human interactions. For this reason, the anthology of Zhu Xi’s letters developed into both major textbooks and references among scholars under T’oegye’s influence.⁶⁶

This emphasis on Zhu Xi’s letters also spread to some scholars who were not under T’oegye’s direct tutelage. Kim Uong (1540–1603), who studied with Cho Sik (1501–1572), was well known for perusing T’oegye’s anthology.⁶⁷ When the king asked Kim what books he had been reading recently, he mentioned The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters along with Reflections on Things at Hand (Kŭnsarok).⁶⁸ Sŏng Hon, who led the academic discourse of the Sŏin faction, which competed with the Namin faction of T’oegye school scholars, openly encouraged his followers to carefully read T’oegye’s anthology. He asserted that this collection discussed all obstacles that scholars might encounter and would provide solutions for them. Thus, if they closely read and deeply savored the letters included in it, scholars would have no reason to seek out any other teachers or friends to answer their questions.⁶⁹ Chŏng Ch’ŏl (1536–1593), another leading Sŏin figure, also stated that T’oegye’s anthology illuminates the fundamental core of Zhu Xi’s writing collection.⁷⁰ T’oegye’s focus on letters certainly influenced the ways Korean scholars approached Neo-Confucianism, regardless of their political orientation.

Besides its pedagogical and scholarly functions, this letter anthology as material object delivered symbolic meaning in defining the academic heritage of the T’oegye school. The records about Pak Kwangjŏn (1526–1597), for instance, highlight that he received a copy of The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters from T’oegye when he visited Tosan in 1566.⁷¹ Pak, who was from Chŏlla, was not generally regarded as one of the major disciples of T’oegye, most of whom were from nearby areas and served him for a long period. However, this powerful story of the inheritance of material texts legitimated his membership in the group despite his brief meeting with the master. Considering that this anthology was printed in 1561 and other print runs ensued, the copy that Pak received could have been a printed version, which we cannot confirm now. T’oegye had persistently and meticulously redacted different printed versions of his anthology since the first version was brought into the world.⁷² Irrespective of the printing medium, it is very likely that this version included T’oegye’s handwritten annotations and comments, which could have brought special meaning in defining Pak’s academic status. In any event, following T’oegye’s advice, Pak seriously scrutinized this letter anthology, asking T’oegye through correspondence about what he did not understand.⁷³ He compiled these questions and answers into a book, which many scholars later copied to refer to, although it is not extant.⁷⁴ The author of Pak’s record of conduct (haengjang), An Pangjun (1573–1654), narrated this story about the inheritance of T’oegye’s anthology and subsequent scholarly activities as the pivotal event establishing Pak as a notable scholar.

Yi Chŏn’s (1558–1648) inheritance of this letter anthology resembles Pak’s story, but in this case the transmission extended over three generations. In describing the scholarship of Yi Chŏn, Yi Sangjŏng (1710–1781) placed the story of material inheritance at the center, just as An Pangjun did for Pak Kwangjŏn. He argued that T’oegye emphasized Zhu Xi’s letters as the standard of the Confucian Way and Yu Sŏngnyong succeeded by learning from them. Yi Chŏn and his younger brother, Yi Chun (1560–1635), continued this legacy by studying under Yu. Notably, Yi Chŏn received a set of The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters from Yu. He delved into this specific work for the rest of his life and compiled a book titled The Collected Essence of Zhu Xi’s Letters (Hoeamsŏ ch’waryo), which categorizes the letters according to major Confucian concepts, although this text does not survive.⁷⁵ The reception of this letter anthology from the master and the ensuing scrutiny of it laid the groundwork for eulogizing Yi’s scholarship and its significance in the tradition of the T’oegye school. The material transmission of this anthology from master to disciple symbolized that the recipient inherited the orthodox Neo-Confucian tradition, which originated from Zhu Xi.

The fact that The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters was published eight times in total until the end of the dynasty illustrates its academic weight in the Chosŏn scholarly culture.⁷⁶ Considering that the main means of textual transmission in pre-twentieth-century Korea was transcription, manuscript copies of this anthology might have been more widely disseminated than the number of print runs would suggest. Although it seems true that many scholars welcomed this anthology, it also became the site of academic contention where Namin and Sŏin scholars expressed their different views about Neo-Confucian scholarship from the seventeenth century onward. Most T’oegye school scholars continued to adhere to letters as the prime writing genre for delving into Zhu Xi’s theories while producing commentaries to and annotations on this anthology. Sŏin scholars, however, began to point out the incompleteness of T’oegye’s choice of only letters from various genres. They attempted to distinguish themselves by broadly embracing Zhu Xi’s writings in other genres.

The earliest existing annotations on T’oegye’s anthology are The Record of Questions on “The Abbreviated Essence of Zhu Xi’s Letters” (Chusŏ chŏryo kiŭi) and The Record of Lectures on “The Abbreviated Essence of Zhu Xi’s Letters” (Chusŏ chŏryo kangnok). These include neither prefaces nor postscripts; thus, it is difficult to determine their authorship and publication processes. Whereas The Record of Questions annotates only T’oegye’s anthology, The Record of Lectures includes comparative analysis with different versions of The Complete Collection of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings published in both China and Korea, in addition to annotations. Most remarkably, The Record of Questions includes fifteen chapters, akin to the original manuscript of T’oegye’s anthology with fourteen chapters, whereas The Record of Lectures has twenty chapters, just like the versions printed after 1567.⁷⁷ Although the bibliographical information about these two annotated volumes remains obscure and does not show how they were actually circulated and used, it is certain that the different editorial policies affected how late Chosŏn scholars approached Zhu Xi’s version of Neo-Confucianism.⁷⁸ Interestingly, T’oegye school scholars referred to The Record of Lectures as the authentic disciples’ record of the master’s teaching, whereas the Sŏin scholars claimed that The Record of Questions was T’oegye’s own commentary on his anthology. Focusing on this particular work, Sŏin scholars problematized its incompleteness and T’oegye’s partiality to letters. This actually led Song Siyŏl to expand the annotations to all Zhu Xi’s writings, which developed into The Record of Questions about “The Great Compendium of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings” (Chuja taejŏn ch’aŭi).

Although criticism of T’oegye’s choice of letters prevailed among Sŏin scholars, the first attempt to anthologize Zhu Xi’s other writings was initiated by Chŏng Kyŏngse (1563–1633), who had studied under Yu Sŏngnyong. Like T’oegye, he thought that the vast quantity of Zhu Xi’s writings did not allow scholars to closely scrutinize them. However, because T’oegye’s anthology focused only on letters, Chŏng stated, he anthologized some other works into eight chapters to complement it. He completed this work in 1622 and titled it The Deliberation on Selected Writings of Zhu Xi (Chumun chakhae).⁷⁹ This anthology mostly focused on Zhu Xi’s political writings, such as memorials presented to the emperor and commentaries on political institutions, although it also included some miscellaneous writings such as postscripts to other scholars’ works. Focusing on correcting typos, however, Chŏng did not put forth his views about the content of Zhu Xi’s writings. He attached neither a preface nor postscript, which would have provided information about how he decided to compile the collection. Song Chun’gil (1606–1672), in his postscript to this work put together by his father-in-law, claimed that Chŏng intended to reveal the true meanings of Zhu Xi’s writings for themselves rather than through his annotations.⁸⁰

Even if Chŏng intended to weaken the criticism of T’oegye’s anthology by complementing it with some other writings, his effort exposed another limitation by focusing solely on political genres. Instead of discrediting these anthologies outright, Song Siyŏl took it as his responsibility to combine them, which he did in a volume titled The Comprehensive Compilation of “The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters” and “The Deliberation on Selected Writings of Zhu Xi” (Chŏlchak t’ongp’yŏn). Initially, he aimed to annotate Chŏng’s anthology. However, he expanded his project by compiling Zhu Xi’s other writings, those not included in these two anthologies. He titled it The Comprehensive Compilation with Supplementation of Omissions (Chŏlchak t’ongp’yŏn poyu). In this process, he ended up annotating all of Zhu Xi’s writings included in his collection. These comprehensive annotations were finally published as The Record of Questions on “The Great Compendium of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings.”⁸¹ In his preface written in 1689, Song lamented that T’oegye’s annotations on Zhu Xi’s writings are partial, whereas Chŏng’s anthology has no annotations. Here, Song concluded that The Record of Questions on “The Abbreviated Essence of Master Zhu Xi’s Letters” was T’oegye’s own annotations on his anthology.⁸² Song did not conceal his dissatisfaction with the annotations, using such direct expressions as “could not be true” (kongmiyŏn), “[the argument] might be [supported] only [by] him” (kongsagodan), “[the argument] might not be stable” (kongmian), and “[the argument] might be too far-fetched” (kongt’aesim).⁸³ Revealing the imperfection of T’oegye’s understanding of Zhu Xi’s scholarship, he intended to dominate the academic discourse of the period with this work. In his preface, he stated that Yulgok Yi I specialized in Zhu Xi’s scholarship, and Kim Sanghŏn (1570–1652) succeeded him. This tradition ran in Kim’s family; thus, Kim’s grandsons—Sujŭng (1624–1701), Suhŭng (1626–1690), and Suhang (1629–1689)—whom Song consulted in completing this work, established the academic authority of the period. Moreover, Song claimed that Suhang’s son, Ch’anghyŏp (1651–1708), and Kwŏn Sangha (1641–1721), who studied under Song, carried on this scholarly tradition.⁸⁴ The compilation is attributed not simply to Song’s scholarly ambition but also to his pursuit of academic authority and prestige as the legitimate inheritor of the Neo-Confucian heritage from Zhu Xi.

Song’s backlash against T’oegye’s anthology also testifies to the changed perception of Zhu Xi’s version of Neo-Confucianism in seventeenth-century Korea. As discussed, the early Chosŏn scholars, including T’oegye, took it upon themselves to make sense of difficult Neo-Confucian texts. Thus, T’oegye made them both easier to understand by focusing on letters and more accessible by anthologizing them. The norm of the sixteenth century was to make Zhu Xi’s scholarship comprehensible to a wide spectrum of scholars. However, when the Korean literati deepened their knowledge, they aimed to attain comprehensive understanding rather than taking a shortcut to the essence of this scholarship. This academic change also reverberated in Korean scholars’ claim that Chosŏn was the last bastion of Confucian civilization after the fall of the Ming. For literati like Song, the partial treatment of Zhu Xi’s scholarship in anthologies no longer held currency. After all, T’oegye’s anthology targeted novices in Zhu Xi’s version of Neo-Confucianism.

Going beyond anthologizing and annotating Zhu Xi’s writings from his collection, some scholars extracted Zhu Xi’s writings that had been buried in the works of other scholars. A good example of such efforts is Pak Sech’ae’s The Collection of Omissions from “The Great Compendium of Master Zhu Xi’s Writings” (Chuja taejŏn sŭbyu). This extraordinary passion to save every piece of Zhu’s work distinguished the Korean Neo-Confucian tradition from that of contemporary China, which could legitimize Korea as the inheritor of Song Confucian tradition. By the eighteenth century, the general format of Zhu Xi’s writing collection in Korea embraced Pak’s work, thus explicitly differing from the version circulated in China.⁸⁵

However, T’oegye’s emphasis on letters as the most effective genre for Neo-Confucian studies died hard. Some adherents to this idea attempted to crystallize T’oegye’s anthology even further. Cho Ik (1579–1655) had grappled with this work for about three decades, and he anthologized it again as The Categorized Essence of Zhu Xi’s Letters (Chusŏ yoryu). This volume includes only about 60 percent of the letters originally contained in T’oegye’s version. In the preface written in 1642, Cho claimed that although T’oegye contributed to posterity with his anthology of Zhu Xi’s letters, even that book is not easy to master because the letters are still copious. He asserted, “In general, what [you] get is precise when the speech is succinct; and it would be easier to put your efforts [into scholarship] when the writing is concise.”⁸⁶ Echoing T’oegye’s concern about scholars overwhelmed by too much to study, Cho stressed brevity and conciseness.⁸⁷ Here, we can see that some scholars still viewed access to Zhu Xi’s complex texts as the priority, unlike the more serious approach to this scholarship as seen in the case of Song Siyŏl.

Another trend reinforcing the importance of letters in the late Chosŏn Confucian tradition was to make the annotations on T’oegye’s anthology impeccable. Ever since the authenticity of these annotations emerged as an academic issue in the seventeenth century, T’oegye’s intellectual heirs had worked on revising them. In particular, Yi Chae (1657–1730), who led the T’oegye school in the Yŏngnam area, completed The Correction and Supplement of “The Record of Lectures on ‘The Abbreviated Essence of Zhu Xi’s Letters’ ” (Chusŏ kangnok kanbo) in the early eighteenth century. In the preface, written in 1713, Yi mentioned that the contents of The Record of Lectures had remained problematic because scholars published material T’oegye had not reviewed, assuming that he had. Because some records in it are not thorough enough, he continued, they do not help readers at all. Yi added that there had been several works published on the assumption that T’oegye might have written them, and The Record of Lectures is one of them.⁸⁸ Yi displayed extraordinary caution in dealing with information appearing in Zhu Xi’s letters, so as not to repeat the mistakes that T’oegye’s followers had made. Yi left what he could not verify as it was, adding a note, “transmitting questions [to posterity]” (chŏnŭi), without making conjectures. At the same time, he kept what he thought was erroneous in The Record of Lectures, adding notes such as “needs to be substantiated” (tangsangji) or “the record might be wrong” (konggio).

This effort to make T’oegye’s anthology impeccable also motivated some Korean scholars to revisit the letters of Zhu Xi that had been excluded from T’oegye’s work. As late as the late eighteenth century, King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800), who is well known for his academic zeal, selected one hundred letters from both T’oegye’s anthology and Zhu Xi’s writing collection and titled the compilation One Hundred Selected Letters of Zhu Xi (Chusŏ paeksŏn). Five hundred copies were first printed using metal moveable type in 1794; Chŏngjo ordered them distributed to state schools across the country. He also directed the provincial governors to print the work again with woodblocks to disseminate it widely.⁸⁹

The Neo-Confucian discourse of late Chosŏn scholars, irrespective of their factional affiliations, was heavily influenced by T’oegye’s choice of letters as the best genre to elaborate on complex academic issues. Even Sŏin scholars, competing with T’oegye’s intellectual heirs both politically and academically, had to remain sensitive to the relation between academic subjects and different written modes in order to deliver information effectively. Therefore, their criticism of and backlash against T’oegye’s partiality maintained reciprocity with the Confucian discourse derived from Zhu Xi’s letters, to which T’oegye connected Chosŏn scholars.

ANTHOLOGIZING T’OEGYE’S LETTERS AS CONFUCIAN TEXTS

T’oegye’s intellectual offspring could continue to stress the significance of letters in part due to the academic attention to the Four-Seven Debate in the late Chosŏn period. The Letters Exchanged between Two Masters (Yang sŏnsaeng Wangboksŏ), edited by Ki Hyojŭng, had been circulated since 1614. The revised version was also available under the title The Letters Exchanged between Two Masters on the Four-Seven and I-ki (Yang sŏnsaeng Sach’il Iki Wangboksŏ), republished in the late eighteenth century. It seems certain that this topic held vital significance in the Neo-Confucian tradition of the late Chosŏn, and thus the letters continued to serve as the central academic genre. However, it was not until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that scholars wrote annotations on and analyses of the Four-Seven Debate. For instance, Chŏng Sihan (1625–1707) compiled his Verifications and Proofs on the Four-Seven Debate (Sach’il pyŏnjŭng), and Yi Ik authored The New Edition of the Four-Seven Debate (Sach’il sinp’yŏn). These two works criticize Yulgok’s denial of T’oegye’s argument on the topic. Chŏng put forth that although Ki Taesŭng realized the problems of his own argument while debating with T’oegye, his explanation of T’oegye’s theory revealed that he was forced to follow it without fully comprehending it. Also, he claimed that although Yulgok beguiled posterity with his eloquent writing style, his ideas were not drawn from the Confucian classics.⁹⁰ Yi Ik also argued that Ki failed to convey his argument in writing, and Yulgok exacerbated it by claiming the rightness of Ki’s argument with his harangue.⁹¹ Yi went one step further and claimed that Song Chun’gil forsook T’oegye to elevate Yulgok. Because the contemporary scholars did not want to get involved in academic turmoil, Yi continued, Song’s interpretation of the Four-Seven Debate ended up being widely accepted.⁹²

In this situation, T’oegye school scholars in the seventeenth century also utilized his letters as another means to raise their academic status. They compiled T’oegye’s letters as a separate collection modeled after his anthology of Zhu Xi’s letters. The oldest existing anthology of T’oegye’s letters is Chŏng Hon’s (1602–1656) The Abbreviated Essence of Master Yi [T’oegye]’s Letters (Ijasŏ chŏryo). Chŏng’s academic heritage stemmed from T’oegye’s scholarship, as his father had learned from Chŏng Kyŏngse.⁹³ Chŏng Hon thought that an abridged anthology of T’oegye’s letters would facilitate their dissemination; scholars in the countryside could not easily obtain the letters but were eager to read them for their Confucian studies.⁹⁴ However, this six-volume manuscript remained unpublished for about two centuries, in part due to Chŏng Hon’s reluctance to publicize it. He was concerned about potential criticism of his editing of the work of a prominent Confucian master. Hence, it does not seem that the anthology was widely circulated. Notably, Yi Sisu’s (d.u.) postscript, which was probably written in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, informs readers that a similar anthology of T’oegye’s letters had been produced about one hundred years earlier, though we do not have any further information about it.⁹⁵ Echoing this record, there are frequent accounts revealing scholars’ demand for the anthology of T’oegye’s letters in writings produced in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. For instance, the record of conduct of Yi Chae reads that he intended to anthologize T’oegye’s letters following T’oegye’s precedent of publishing Zhu Xi’s letters, but he could not complete this project.⁹⁶ Meanwhile, Kwŏn Sangil’s letter to Hwang Chaesu (d.u.) reads that they were collaborating on a work titled The Classified Collection of T’oegye’s Letters (T’oesŏ yuch’an). Here, Kwŏn suggested editing this work following the editorial policy of the Reflections on Things at Hand.⁹⁷ However, we do not know whether they completed this work, as it is no longer extant. Yi Ik’s letter sent to Kwŏn in 1743 accounts for the collection of letters exchanged between T’oegye and his disciples, on which some scholars were working. Yi mentions that he had named this The Scholarship of the Eastern Scholars (Tongsa chi hak) and asks Kwŏn’s opinion about this title.⁹⁸ The various attempts to anthologize T’oegye’s letters suggest that they could have been circulated widely during the late Chosŏn period.

Another existing anthology of T’oegye’s letters was compiled by Yi Sangjŏng and titled The Abbreviated Essence of Master T’oegye’s Letters (T’oegye sŏnsaeng sŏ chŏryo). The basic structure of this ten-fascicle anthology is very similar to that of Chŏng Hon’s work. The difference, however, rests upon the intertextuality between Yi’s anthology and other textual practices of T’oegye school scholars in this period. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these scholars worked on publishing the writing collections of T’oegye’s disciples, following the publication of works dealing with the master-disciple relationship, such as the compilation of disciples’ narratives on the master’s everyday practices and the roster of the academic school specifically pinpointing who learned from whom.⁹⁹ Yi Sangjŏng was also engaged in such projects and drafted prefaces for the writing collections of Yi Chŏn and Kim Yung (? –1594). Therefore, Yi Sangjŏng’s anthologization of T’oegye’s letters was his statement about the academic lineage of the T’oegye school. T’oegye’s scholarship passed down to his pupils “in the middle of their daily practices” (iryong chi kan), as observed in his letters, and the studies of these letters and their survival as a book warranted the continuation of T’oegye’s scholarly heritage.

Reading letters was also a daily ritual for T’oegye school scholars, who tried to embody the message of letters written by Confucian masters in everyday practices. Chŏng Yagyong’s (1762–1836) work shows well how a leading intellectual of the period emphasized the letters in the learning process. In the winter of 1795, Chŏng was in exile at Kŭmjŏng, and he happened to get a half set of the writing collection of T’oegye from a neighbor. He read one letter every morning and before noon recorded what he had learned and contemplated from the daily reading. When he was released from exile, he titled this The Record for Modeling after T’oegye (Tosan sasungnok).¹⁰⁰ In it, Chŏng discussed self-cultivation, the method of scholarship, and the propriety of serving the state. It is notable that Chŏng immersed himself in T’oegye’s letters in his daily practices. Thus, this period in his life cannot be understood without considering his attachment to the letters. This case shows that T’oegye school scholars stressed the significance of embodying knowledge in daily practice not only through the contents but also through the reading mode of the genre of letters.

As T’oegye was a leading public intellectual of the time, his attention to written modes influenced the ways fellow scholars and future generations studied and interpreted Neo-Confucianism throughout the late Chosŏn period. Therefore, it is worth asking why Zhu Xi’s version of Neo-Confucianism dominated Korean scholarly culture but did not prevail in the academic discourse of contemporary China, where other academic schools such as that of Wang Yangming competed with it. The answer is that while this scholarship accompanied the rise of a new written culture in Korea, there was no particular written culture supporting Zhu Xi’s discourse in China. Even there, some letters were written not for communication but to fix the author’s ideas in textual form, which allowed for rereading and further reference. In particular, admonitory letters were indistinguishable from nonepistolary genres such as intellectual testaments in terms of function.¹⁰¹ Letters in late imperial China functioned as the supplementary means to spread knowledge that could not be incorporated into books or essays;¹⁰² they hold no significance in the Confucian canon.¹⁰³ In the Chosŏn epistolary culture, however, letters became the main genre for Neo-Confucian studies and self-cultivation. Unlike Korean scholars, Ming literati were affected by the mode of book production. The surge of commercial printing on various philosophical subjects in the mid-Ming period coincided with the demise of Zhu Xi’s version of Neo-Confucianism and the rising popularity of the thought of Wang Yangming.¹⁰⁴ The availability of more books facilitated the spread of new approaches to Neo-Confucianism, which allowed intellectuals to challenge preexisting ideas. In both the Chosŏn and the Ming, people not only understood new ideas more easily but also put them into practice, when they were conveyed in the appropriate written mode. However ingenious and innovative certain ideas may be, they need to be presented in an accessible medium to be applicable in social reality.