In the Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean Literature, the editor Yoon Sun Yang has brought together twenty-one contributors to provide an overview of some of the most relevant issues in contemporary Korean literary studies. In offering a broad introduction to modern Korean literature, the book may be compared to earlier English-language anthologies, but it diverges sharply from these prior publications in its approach to the subject. Instead of offering a survey of representative works, the book makes visible the multiple, sometimes intersecting and sometimes competing, practices that make up what is called modern Korean literature. It sheds light on the interpretive frameworks that have long prescribed which texts constitute “modern Korean literature” and how they should be read. Moreover, it showcases the various ways these earlier frameworks are currently being challenged.
The book provides broad historical coverage—the texts discussed range from the writings of Korean Confucian literati in the...
