The invention of an easily learned Korean alphabet in the mid-fifteenth
century sparked an "epistolary revolution" in the following century as
letter writing became an indispensable daily practice for elite men and
women alike. The amount of correspondence increased exponentially as new
epistolary networks were built among scholars and within families, and
written culture created room for appropriation and subversion by those
who joined epistolary practices.
Focusing on the ways that written culture interacts with philosophical,
social, and political changes, The Power of the Brush examines the
social effects of these changes and adds a Korean perspective to the
evolving international discourse on the materiality of texts. It
demonstrates how innovative uses of letters and the appropriation of
letter-writing practices empowered elite cultural, social, and political
minority groups: Confucians who did not have access to the advanced
scholarship of China; women who were excluded from the male-dominated
literary culture, which used Chinese script; and provincial literati,
who were marginalized from court politics. New modes of reading and
writing that were developed in letter writing precipitated changes in
scholarly methodology, social interactions, and political mobilization.
Even today, remnants of these traditional epistolary practices endure in
media and political culture, reverberating in new communications
technologies.
The Power of the Brush is freely available in an open access edition
thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous
support of Emory University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
DOI 10.6069/9780295747828
