Epistolary Korea, the last book that JaHyun Kim Haboush saw to print before her untimely death, was a milestone in the study of Chosŏn. Through her editorship of this source collection, she created a bold vision of a “communicative space” formed by letter writing of all sorts, in all available linguistic registers, by people high and low. The Power of the Brush by Hwisang Cho, Haboush’s erstwhile student and a contributor to her volume, is thoroughly informed by this vision. Tying in with Haboush’s encompassing understanding of the “letter” as all writing with an addressee, Cho offers a multifaceted narrative of the changing topography of this communicative space throughout the Chosŏn era as seen through the lens of “epistolary practices.”
The indebtedness to Epistolary Korea is also visible in the book’s structure. If the former arranges its source materials in a zooming-in fashion, starting with the most public genres...
