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An Unknown Masterpiece: On Pak Kyongni’s Land and World Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2015

Sowon S. Park
Sowon S. Park*
Affiliation:
Faculty of English, St. Cross Building, Oxford University, OX1 3UL, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores some of the issues that prevent the existence of a more diverse canon in the field of world literature. It discusses extra-literary issues that have been effectively displaced onto the question of literary quality and outlines some of the concrete hurdles that face minority literatures, with reference to the literature of modern East Asia (China, Korea and Japan). The final section examines Pak Kyongni’s Land (1969–1994), a novel virtually unknown outside of Korea but revered there as the national epic. The discussion of a work that is regarded as ‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’ by one nation yet remains practically unknown to the world will bring to the fore issues of ranking and status produced by the ‘worldification’ of literatures. In the process, it will consider some of the dynamics between nationality and universality, the relations between literature and nation, and what it means for literatures to be in dialogue when literatures and literary histories have been defined along national lines.

Type
Focus: A Dialogue of Cultures
Information
European Review , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 426 - 438
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2015 

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References

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