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Start Over Creator Jung-Shim, Lee

2. New woman reborn as a Buddhist nun: Kim Ir-yop´s Buddhist stories in the age of Yŏnae

Creator:
Jung-Shim, Lee
Format:
bez média and svazek
Type:
model:article and TEXT
Language:
English
Description:
This article examines Kim Ir-yŏp (金一葉)’s Buddhist works of fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, characterized by a preoccupation with free love (yŏnae). Kim Ir-yŏp was a pioneering New Woman (sin yŏsŏng) in colonial Korea, who advocated free will in relation to love and marriage, something which directly challenged traditional views and customs. Her involvement in Buddhism gave the false impression that she was a New Woman who had met a tragic end, as if she had departed the world and given up all of her literary and social activities. On the contrary, Kim Ir-yŏp, as a Buddhist woman, was even more eager to produce her works, still considering love as an important subject. The presence of love in her Buddhist writings is more than just a lingering attachment. It should be understood as one of the Buddhist responses to modernity, modernity that is epitomized by free love in colonial Korea. A text-analysis of her Buddhist works of fiction demonstrates how she seriously considers love as part of the process of Buddhist modernization and produces discourses on it by re-discovering and revising old Buddhist legends (tales), for instance.
Rights:
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ and policy:public