“The image of women in the literature of the Chosǒn period: passion and eroticism in the conflict between official and un-official discourse in Korea”

This article explores women’s attitudes toward the emotions of eros and passion during the Chosŏn period (1392-1910) in Korea. A deep silence and taboo shroud these topics in elite literature. Moreover, there is no independent genre of erotic literature. Only some tales, poems, songs and proverbs have been transmitted from the oral tradition, which forces us to consider also historical material in order to search for the existence of a discourse between official and un-official sexual attitudes among women of the Chosŏn period. I intend to explore the multiple figures of the feminine transmitted in the literature of the elite, other linguistic and cultural domains such as oral literature and historical documents which open the way to frame the official paradigm in the broader context of the society and literature of the period.