Yi Kyu-Bo

Yi Kyu-Bo 

(pseudonyms, Paegunkosa and Ch’ungyong). Born Jan. 15, 1169, in Yoju, present-day province of Kyongi do; died Sept. 2, 1241, on the island of Kanghwa. Korean poet and prose writer; wrote in hanmun. Son of a landowner of modest means.

Yi Kyu-bo was a civil servant, often in official disfavor. His works criticized the rulers and sympathized with the oppressed peasantry. His narrative poems King Tongmyong (1194) and Three Hundred and Two Rhymes (1194) are imbued with patriotic ideas. Nature lyrics occupied an important place in his work. Yi Kyu-bo was an originator of paesol, a new prose genre (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country and The Stories of Paegun). His criticism of formalism and epigonism in poetry exerted a great influence upon the subsequent development of Korean literature.

WORKS

Choson koj’ong munhak sonjip, vols. 7–8. Pyongyang, 1959.
In Russian translation:
“Izbrannye stikhotvoreniia.” Vostochnyi al’manakh, 1963, no. 6.

REFERENCE

Eremenko, L., and V. Ivanova. Koreiskaia literatura. Moscow, 1964. Pages 19–37.
Nikitina, M. I., and A. F. Trotsevich. Ocherk istorii koreiskoi literatury do XIV v. Moscow, 1969. Pages 22–51.

D. D. ELISEEV