KOREAN LITERATURE 3

This is one of the core courses within the Korea curriculum of the Corso di Laurea in "Lingue, Culture e Società dell'Asia e dell'Africa Mediterranea", for the students specializing in the humanities path.
Korean Literature 3 is designed every year in form of in-depth seminar on a different Korean author, genre or subject relevant to the history of Korean Literature.
This year the course will be dedicated to contemporary Women's poetry, concentrating on two different writers:
Poet Moon Chung-hee, recently translated into Italian (Il mare che cuce, Anthological Selection 1972-2012, tab Edizioni, Rome: 2022) - and the writer Han Kang, also translated into Italian.
Moon Chung-hee is a well-established woman poet, one of the greatest names in contemporary Korean literature. She is a longstanding career poet, protégé of the late Seo Jeongju, and she also engaged herself in theatrical/prose writing, representing the first postwar generation of Korean women poets who gave literary dignity to ‘women’s body’.
Writer and Poet Han Kang, very well-known Korean contemporary author, famous all over the world for her prize-winning book ‘The Vegetarian’ (Man Booker International Prize – 2016. She has been translated and published in Italian with three books: The Vegetarian (Adelphi, 2016), Human Acts (Adelphi, 2017) and Convalescence (Adelphi, 2019), whereas Greek Lessons is in the process of being translated. Han Kang is representative of a younger generation of Korean women writers, and she generally uses prose a main means of expression, but sporadically also recurs to poetry, and we find this aspect of particular interest.

Knowledge and comprehension:
- knowing and understanding the main elements (authors, movements, works and so on) of the two women poets and their worlds.
- connect them with historical and cultural developments studied in other courses of the same curriculum.

Ability to apply knowledge and comprehension:
- ability to analyze and explain literary texts by utilizing given interpretation methods

Judgment abilities:
- ability to produce critiques on textual, historical and literary themes included in the study programme, by recurring to critically and historically solid arguments
- ability to evaluate all kinds of literary primary sources

Communicative abilities:
- ability ot express and elaborate in writing the contents of the course programme, using critical approach and not mnemonical strategies.

Learning abilities:
- learn how to take notes effectively and thoroughly
- how to integrate the study on different materials (notes, slides, manuals, creative texts and academic articles)
- learning to study autonomously with materials and on subjects not covered in class
- Learning how to deal with materials in English

Having passed Korean Language 2 and at least attended Korean Language 3.1

selected poems by poet Moon Chung-hee:
1) 눈을 보면
2) 유령
3) 타국에서
4) 바다 앞에서
5) 보석의 노래
6) 편지 7) 늙은 여자
8) 사람의 가을
9) 사랑해야 하는 이유
10) 눈동자는 왜 둥근가
11) 해벽
12) 가면을 쓰고 너를 기다린다
13) 미로
14) 번개 노래
15) 새벽 새
16) 바다 학교
17) 비 없으면 무지개도 없다
18) 물의 시집
19) 바느질하는 바다
20) 살아 있다는 것은

selected texts by Han Kang:
1) 어느 늦은 저녁 나는
2) 새벽에 들은 노래
3) 새벽에 들은 노래 2
4) 새벽에 들은 노래 3
5) 파란 돌
6) 눈물이 찾아올 때 내 몸은 통 빈 항아리가 되지
7) 이천오년 오월 삼십일…
8) 해부극장
9) 괜찮아
10) 몇 개의 이야기 6
11) 몇 개의 이야기 12
12) 날개
13) 거울 저 편에 겨울
18) 거울 저 편에 겨울 2
19) 첫새벽
20) 무제

Texts in Korean taken from various books by Moon Chunghee and from Han Kang's poetry collection 서럽에 저녁을 넣어 두었다 (2013)


Other reference texts will be provided during class and uploaded on the dedicated moodle platform.

The final test will be a written exam with direct and open-answer questions. Part of the exam will also be the production of an original poetic text, as explained in the sction 'Other Informations'.

Teacher-led classes with group activities, slide projection and use of other interactive teaching materials.

Italian

At the end of the of the course we will organize with the class a concluding poetry reading session, where all
students will read one or more of their translations (together with the original text) . They will also be asked to compose and read in Korean a new
text created by them and inspired to one of their favorite poem, to be chosen among the list provided during class.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development