Ancient & Medieval Studies Colloquium presents, Johann Noh “How East Asia Transformed Chinese Classical Literature and Book Culture: The Case of Korea”

Presented by Johann Noh
Research Professor at the Institute for Sinographic Literatures and Philology, Korea University and Research Associate and Program Coordinator of the Global Humanities Initiative, MIT

Abstract: In premodern East Asia, the countries of the Sinographic cultural sphere sustained a long-standing community of knowledge and culture by constructing and engaging with a shared corpus of texts. However, this community was never a monolithic entity. Each country within the Sinographic sphere selectively imported, published, and disseminated Sinitic texts according to its unique historical and cultural context, as well as its contemporary needs. Through these texts, literati across East Asia participated in a common intellectual tradition, while also reinterpreting and localizing its meanings—thus cultivating a dynamic interplay between cultural unity and diversity. Furthermore, the practical functions of the Sinographic script in everyday language and writing practices varied considerably across regions. In Korea, for instance, Korean-style and idu-style Sinitic coexisted; in China, classical vernacular and early modern vernacular Sinitic coexisted; and in Japan, Japanese-style Sinitic developed. While the elite may have shared a common literary medium, the broader linguistic landscape was marked by rich regional variation. This presentation focuses on the Korean case, examining the role of textual circulation—arguably the most significant mechanism for cultural transmission and intellectual exchange in the Sinographic sphere—and how these texts were received, appreciated, and recontextualized within Korean literary and scholarly culture.

Yoh Han (Johann) Noh (魯耀翰), Research Professor at the Institute for Sinographic Literatures and Philology, Korea University where he serves as the head of the nascent Global Humanities Center. He is the Research Associate and Program Coordinator of the Global Humanities Initiative at MIT for 2023-25. His research encompasses the classical literatures and philological traditions of East Asia’s Sinographic sphere, and he is currently working on a history of Korean literary culture, on the cultural history of the Confucian Civil Service Examination in the Chosŏn period and the exam literature it produced, and on the history of Korean philology. He is currently writing a book History of the Hermeneutics of Literary Sinitic in the Early Chosŏn Period, and translating the poems of the famed literatus-monk Kim Sisŭp (1435-93) in collaboration with MIT’s Professor Wiebke Denecke for the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature (Oxford University Press).

—

Upcoming Talk:

Tuesday, April 22 – Sasha Rickard
(MIT, Boston College) “Hedonism, Ancient and Modern: A Discussion of Plato’s Philebus”