Fengci and Korean aesthetic- political analysis : Jung Yak - yong’s Commentary on The Book of Odes

The Book of Odes carries specific classical aesthetic, political, social and literature value. How it was reflected by traditional scholar Chŏng Yak-yong in monarch Chosŏn dynasty within the rhetoric end? Between the conflict within text knowledge of traditional classics and practical knowledge of western learning, how Chŏng Yak-yong balanced and combined them with rhetorical discourses of fengci(풍자,讽刺)? And what Chŏng Yak-yong understood the rhetoric of fengci offered the open end for the future development of understanding the tradition. Chŏng Yak-yong was one of Korean traditional scholars in late Chosŏn dynasty and through his commitments the fengci in the Book of Odes, I tried to dignify Chŏng Yak-yong’s assumption to image of Korean state confronting the influence of western practical learning and western Catholic religion. Chŏng Yak-yong through his commitments rhetoric of fengci in the Book of Odes rebirthed the traditional thoughts with new contents under the influence of western practical learning. His ideology of state of Korea was based on the traditional text knowledge, meanwhile combined western practical knowledge to build Korean new specific knowledge essence of morality, value and the emotion of public of Koreans, revealing and realizing the power of the state. Even more, his understanding of the fengci in the Book of Odes was based on fengci’s social critical function, associating with Korean traditional ethic value of humanism, rebuilding the essential nature of ruler and noble to the public, which was proper to the current political domination of monarch system. Additionally, the discourse of fengci contained in the Book of Odes would have its literature meaning as poems to the society and political domination. This thesis would find the way that fengci as the rhetoric that how its discourse related the society, politics and literature as an integrated system in monarch late Chosŏn period.