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During its five thousand years of history and culture, Korea has been attacked and invaded by other countries eight hundred times. Despite all its past tragedies, Korea has risen from the ashes and become one of the ten strongest economic countries in the world-all because its people have kept their thoughts, culture, and roots alive. In Korean Thought and Culture: A New Introduction, Dr. Chai-Shin Yu shares the results of his extensive research. He offers careful interpretation of historical facts and in-depth exploration of past events, while determining whether Old-Korean thought culture has always existed independently or arose initially through the sole influence of China. A seasoned le...
Despite the significance of Korea in world Christianity and the crucial role Christianity plays in contemporary Korean religious life, the tradition has been little studied in the West. Christianity in Korea seeks to fill this lacuna by providing a wide-ranging overview of the growth and development of Korean Christianity and the implications that development has had for Korean politics, interreligious dialogue, and gender and social issues. The volume begins with an accessibly written overview that traces in broad outline the history and development of Christianity on the peninsula. This is followed by chapters on broad themes, such as the survival of early Korean Catholics in a Neo-Confuci...
This book offers no less than a radically different view of the Koryŏ state. Until now scholarship failed to recognize the complicated historical descent, byzantine international relations and multiple incommensurable worldviews of the early Korean Koryŏ state (918-1170). Instead, it subjected these to reductionist categories favouring reified particulars over broader views. Asking how Koryŏ meaningfully dealt with its environment, Remco Breuker rejects the reduction of Koryŏ intellectual abundance to analytical categories, and emphasizes the functional importance of Koryŏ’s pluralism in allowing the notion that realities were scattered, inconsistent and plural. Here is a convincing argument that Koryŏ’s pluralism decisively contributed to the formation of a region-transcending communal identity that enabled Koryŏ to engage in a civilizational competition with neighbouring Chinese and Manchurian states, while maintaining a dynamic but stable society domestically.
Investigating the late 16th through the 19th century, this work looks at the shifting boundaries between the Choson state and the adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and popular religions. It counters the static view of the Korean Confucian state and elucidates its relationship to the wider Confucian community and religious groups.
The authors consider new views of the classical versus vernacular dichotomy that are especially central to the new historiography of China and East Asian languages. Based on recent debates initiated by Sheldon Pollock’s findings for South Asia, we examine alternative frameworks for understanding East Asian languages between 1000 and 1919. Using new sources, making new connections, and re-examining old assumptions, we have asked whether and why East and SE Asian languages (e.g., Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, Jurchen, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese) should be analysed in light of a Eurocentric dichotomy of Latin versus vernaculars. This discussion has encouraged us to explore whether European modernity is an appropriate standard at all for East Asia. Individually and collectively, we have sought to establish linkages between societies without making a priori assumptions about the countries’ internal structures or the genealogy of their connections. Contributors include: Benjamin Elman; Peter Kornicki; John Phan; Wei Shang; Haruo Shirane; Mårten Söderblom Saarela; Daniel Trambaiolo; Atsuko Ueda; Sixiang Wang.
For more than half of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula has been divided between two hostile and competitive nation-states, each claiming to be the sole legitimate expression of the Korean nation. The division remains an unsolved problem dating to the beginnings of the Cold War and now projects the politics of that period into the twenty-first century. Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey is designed to provide readers with the historical essentials upon which to unravel the complex politics and contemporary crises that currently exist in the East Asian region. Beginning with a description of late-nineteenth-century imperialism, Michael Robinson shows how traditional Korean politica...
The author presents a selection of papers written over the last twenty or so years, spanning the period from early research into the then nearly unknown Madhyamika writer Bhavaviveka or Bhavya, amongst Tibetan refugees in India, up to the recent past where there interests have, perhaps, somewhat broadened to include comparative religion. The author has moe or less left the essays in their original form and has introduced some consistency in the citing of the names of Japanese scholars in order to aid the English speaking reader unfamiliar with Japanese.
Death and the activities and beliefs surrounding it can teach us much about the ideals and cultures of the living. While biologically death is an end to physical life, this break is not quite so apparent in its mental and spiritual aspects. Indeed, the influence of the dead over the living is sometimes much greater than before death. This volume takes a multidisciplinary approach in an effort to provide a fuller understanding of both historic and contemporary practices linked with death in Korea. Contributors from Korea and the West incorporate the approaches of archaeology, history, literature, religion, and anthropology in addressing a number of topics organized around issues of the body, ...
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