A Study on character articles of Korea and China in the 18th Century: Focusing on the works of Kwon Sang-il and Zhu Hyeon, who intensively covered 節․烈

This paper was planned as part of a study to understand the universality and specificity of character articles in the late Joseon Dynasty. In the 18th century, when character accounts in the late Joseon Dynasty showed various changes, Kwon Sang-il and Joo Gyun, literati in Korea and China, intensively covered 節·烈. Kwon Sang-il’s character stories record women who chose to die after their husbands died. Joo-gyun’s works have a mixture of 烈行 and 節行. The fact that Kwon Sang-il’s works emphasized sincerity stems from the fact that women’s fidelity and protection are regarded as ‘the manifestation of virtue’. On the other hand, the fact that Joo Gyun emphasized the character’s will is the result of looking at the behavioral style of women’s 志操 protection from the dimension of ‘realization of duty’. On the other hand, all the works related to 節烈, starting with Kwon Sang-il, are selecting characters from the existing conservative point of view, which venerated the woman who gave up her life. This is a different aspect from Korea’s Inmuljeon or China’s character articles of the same period, which also recognized the value of 節烈. Also, this is contrary to the 18th century Korean character articles accepting various changes in terms of characters, experiences, and descriptions. In the end, it can be seen that Korean character writers of this period still maintained a conservative view on the behavior of a wife.