Awards

• Commended for James B. Palais Prize, Association for Asian Studies 2023
• Winner of Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies, Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley 2022

Overview

The lineage novel flourished in Korea from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. These vast works unfold genealogically, tracing the lives of several generations. New storylines, often written by different authors, follow the lives of the descendants of the original protagonists, offering encyclopedic accounts of domestic life cycles and relationships. Elite women transcribed these texts-which span tens and even hundreds of volumes-in exquisite vernacular calligraphy and transmitted them through generations in their families. In Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea, Ksenia Chizhova foregrounds lineage novels and the domestic world in which they were read to recast the social transformations of Chosŏn Korea and the development of early modern Korean literature. She demonstrates women's centrality to the creation of elite vernacular Korean practices and argues that domestic-focused genres such as lineage novels, commemorative texts, and family tales shed light on the emergence and perpetuation of patrilineal kinship structures. The proliferation of kinship narratives in the Chosŏn period illuminates the changing affective contours of familial bonds and how the domestic space functioned as a site of their everyday experience. Drawing on an archive of women-centered elite vernacular texts, Chizhova uncovers the structures of feelings and conceptions of selfhood beneath official genealogies and legal statutes, revealing that kinship is as much a textual as a social practice. Shedding new light on Korean literary history and questions of Korea's modernity, this book also offers a broader lens on the global rise of the novel.

Full Product Details

9780231187800

Table of Contents

Reviews

Eloquent, detailed, and original, this book's account of the lineage trope, vernacular writing, gender, and readership sheds new light on the early modern novel in East Asian literary history. -- Ning Ma, author of <i>The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West</i> In this sweeping account of the political, social, and cultural life of seventeenth- to early twentieth-century Korea, Ksenia Chizhova provocatively asks, How did Koreans do kinship? Her fascinating answers offer glimpses into the unruly emotions of everyday life and the oft-tumultuous relations between genders and generations. This is early modern Korea as never before seen and literary history at its best. -- Andre Schmid, author of <i>Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea offers a captivating story about the rise and fall of the lineage novel, walking us through the ways in which the kinship feelings and practices of elite families cast not only the form and content of this genre but also its production and circulation. Compelling testimony of how our deep understanding of history can help us appreciate the aesthetics of bygone days and why literature still matters. -- Yoon Sun Yang, author of <i>From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men: Translating the Individual in Early Colonial Korea</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea sets an admirable standard for emerging studies of premodern Korean literature with its in-depth historical analysis, theoretical sophistication, and measured, clear writing style. -- Sunyoung Park, author of <i>The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea is a methodologically brilliant introduction to Korean lineage novels and the domestic worlds in which they were produced and consumed. Written as women were becoming ever more constrained by patriarchal kinship ideals, lineage novels are a rich archive of the often unruly emotional responses to the affective restructuring of the domestic realm. -- Maram Epstein, author of <i>Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late-Imperial Chinese Fiction</i>

Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea is a methodologically brilliant introduction to Korean lineage novels and the domestic worlds in which they were produced and consumed. Written as women were becoming ever more constrained by patriarchal kinship ideals, lineage novels are a rich archive of the often unruly emotional responses to the affective restructuring of the domestic realm. -- Maram Epstein, author of <i>Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late-Imperial Chinese Fiction</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea sets an admirable standard for emerging studies of premodern Korean literature with its in-depth historical analysis, theoretical sophistication, and measured, clear writing style. -- Sunyoung Park, author of <i>The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea offers a captivating story about the rise and fall of the lineage novel, walking us through the ways in which the kinship feelings and practices of elite families cast not only the form and content of this genre but also its production and circulation. Compelling testimony of how our deep understanding of history can help us appreciate the aesthetics of bygone days and why literature still matters. -- Yoon Sun Yang, author of <i>From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men: Translating the Individual in Early Colonial Korea</i> In this sweeping account of the political, social, and cultural life of seventeenth- to early twentieth-century Korea, Ksenia Chizhova provocatively asks, How did Koreans do kinship? Her fascinating answers offer glimpses into the unruly emotions of everyday life and the oft-tumultuous relations between genders and generations. This is early modern Korea as never before seen and literary history at its best. -- Andre Schmid, author of <i>Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919</i> Eloquent, detailed, and original, this book's account of the lineage trope, vernacular writing, gender, and readership sheds new light on the early modern novel in East Asian literary history. -- Ning Ma, author of <i>The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea is a fascinating read, and Chizhova does an excellent job in outlining the development, structure and history of the lineage novel. * Tony's Reading List *

Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea offers a captivating story about the rise and fall of the lineage novel, walking us through the ways in which the kinship feelings and practices of elite families cast not only the form and content of this genre, but also its production and circulation. Compelling testimony of how our deep understanding of history can help us appreciate the aesthetics of bygone days and why literature still matters. -- Yoon Sun Yang, author of <i>From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men: Translating the Individual in Early Colonial Korea</i> In this sweeping account of the political, social, and cultural life of 17th to early 20th century Korea, Ksenia Chizhova provocatively asks how did Koreans do kinship? Her fascinating answers offer glimpses into the unruly emotions of everyday life and the oft-tumultuous relations between genders and generations. This is early modern Korea as never before seen and literary history at its best. -- Andre Schmid, author of <i>Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea is a methodologically brilliant introduction to Korean lineage novels and the domestic worlds in which they were produced and consumed. Written as women were becoming ever more constrained by patriarchal kinship ideals, lineage novels are a rich archive of the often unruly emotional responses to the affective restructuring of the domestic realm. -- Maram Epstein, author of <i>Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late-Imperial Chinese Fiction</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea sets an admirable standard for emerging studies of premodern Korean literature for its in-depth historical analysis, its theoretical sophistication, and its measured, clear writing style. -- Sunyoung Park, author of <i>The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea 1910-1945</i>

Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea sets an admirable standard for emerging studies of premodern Korean literature for its in-depth historical analysis, its theoretical sophistication, and its measured, clear writing style. -- Sunyoung Park, author of <i>The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea 1910-1945</i>

Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea is a methodologically brilliant introduction to Korean lineage novels and the domestic worlds in which they were produced and consumed. Written as women were becoming ever more constrained by patriarchal kinship ideals, lineage novels are a rich archive of the often unruly emotional responses to the affective restructuring of the domestic realm. -- Maram Epstein, author of <i>Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late-Imperial Chinese Fiction</i> Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea sets an admirable standard for emerging studies of premodern Korean literature for its in-depth historical analysis, its theoretical sophistication, and its measured, clear writing style. -- Sunyoung Park, author of <i>The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea 1910-1945</i>

Author Information

Ksenia Chizhova is assistant professor of East Asian studies at Princeton University.

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