The Poetic World of Classic Korean Women Writers

At a time when literary Chinese was monopolized by male intellectuals, it is remarkable from the aspect of establishing female intellectual history that goes beyond simply the quality and value of their literature that these women, systematically prohibited from public education, taught themselves Chinese literature and became involved in the act of writing poetry, rivaling their male interllectual counterparts in literature. In this respect, we can fully assume that besides the existing literary works, there must have been innumerable poems written by women, unknown to the world, and that these works, to our regret, were destroyed due to a reluctance by these women to have their works made public to the outside world. Nevertheless, the fact that exceptional female poets have continuously produced works in each successive age means that the very act of writing poetry worked emotionally as a kine of support for their lives.