Credits

Tracing the Anthologization of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn's Poems

The multi-directional oral, written, and printed journeys of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn's poems after her death make near impossible any attempt to determine the intent of any one editor or compiler who decided to include her in an anthology. While biographical accounts and other paratextual materials are extremely useful precisely because of their explicit appraisal of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn and her work, a systematic consideration of selection strategies promises to reveal more subtle attempts to shape Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn's image—both at the level of which type of poem to include, as well as how to edit them.

The following table serves as a good starting point for a consideration of selection strategies because it allows us to obtain a tentative idea of which poems were available to those making the choices. At the same time, many of the most interesting editorial interventions are found within the text of the poems themselves, and a comparison of titles does little to address that issue. Nevertheless, we can still learn which of her poems were the most well-known, which were only found in a single anthology, which were misattributed, and which were likely not written by Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn at all.

The table traces the anthologization of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn's poems over almost three centuries. The top row contains the titles of all of the anthologies from the "Anthologies in Korea and China" section for which we had information about specific poems. Of those, all are complete with the exception of Jusha yuanchang 聚沙元倡, which includes 168 of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn's poems, most about which we are unsure. The column on the far left contains titles of all poems included in the Chŏson Nansŏrhŏn Jip 雪蘭軒集. Thereafter, a dot indicates that a particular poem is reprinted in a later anthology. When poems appear for the first time, the name of the poem is printed under that anthology. When a single title indicates more than one poem, the number of poems is used instead of a dot. Brackets indicate that the poems were included in the anthology, but not attributed to Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn In addition, The poems included in Liechao shiji are linked to the text and translation of those particular poems. Finally, the column on the far right contains the total number of instances of a particular poem. The relative popularity of such poems as "Ancient Parting" 古別離,"Gazing at Immortals" 望仙謠, and "The Song of the Zither by Xiang River" 湘弦曲, for example, is unmistakable.

2007 Columbia University