Literature
- See also: Korean literature till 1948, then South Korean literature, Korean poetry, List of Korean language poets.
Modern literature is often linked with the development of hangul, which helped spread literacy from the dominant classes to the common people, including women. Hangul, however, only reached a dominant position in Korean literature in the second half of the 19th century, resulting in a major growth in Korean literature. Sinsoseol, for instance, are novels written in hangul.
In modern poetry, there were attempts at introducing imagist and modern poetry methods particularly in translations of early American moderns such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot in the early 20th century. In the early Republic period, patriotic works were very successful.
Lyric poetry dominated from the 1970s onwards. Poetry is quite popular in contemporary South Korea, both in terms of number of works published and lay writing.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of South Korea
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“The calmest husbands make the stormiest wives.”
—17th-century English proverb, pt. 1, quoted in Isaac d’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature (1834)
“No state can build
A literature that shall at once be sound
And sad on a foundation of well-being.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)