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The Cloud Dream of the Nine
The Cloud Dream of the Nine, also translated as The Nine Cloud Dream (Korean: 구운몽; Hanja: 九雲夢; RR: Kuunmong), is a 17th-century Korean novel set in the Chinese Tang dynasty.[1] Although widely-attributed to Kim Man-jung, there have been some arguments about whether he was the original author.[2] However, as both a Hangul and fantasy novel, it was not something a Korean scholar of the 17th century would own up to writing.[3] The consensus of the Korean scholarly community is that Kim Man-jung was the author.[3]
It has been called "one of the most beloved masterpieces in Korean literature."[4] It was the first literary work from Korea to be translated into English, by James Scarth Gale in 1922. Richard Rutt's translation entitled A Nine Cloud Dream appeared in 1974. In 2019, Heinz Insu Fenkl published a new translation entitled The Nine Cloud Dream including his lengthy introduction with Penguin Classics[2] which was hailed by The New York Times as one of the most anticipated books of 2019.[5]
The Cloud Dream of the Nine is written by a scholar well versed in Classical Chinese literature and expresses Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist concepts,[6][7][8][9] and could be called a Buddhist romance. The oldest existing text of the book was written in Classical Chinese.[10][11][12][13]
- ^ Kuunmong: The Cloud Dream of the Nine Man-jung Kim, James S. Gale "a story of true faith tested by worldly ambition, set in Tang Dynasty China; a love story, and a classic expression of Confucian values in conflict with Buddhist beliefs."
- ^ a b Fenkl, Heinz Insu. "Kuunmong A Translator's Note". Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture. 7 (2014): 357–362.
- ^ a b Fenkl, Heinz Insu (2019). Introduction, The Nine Cloud Dream (Kim Man-jung). Penguin Books.ISBN 978-0143131274
- ^ "Most Anticipated: The Great First-Half 2019 Book Preview". The Millions. 2019-01-08. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
- ^ "The Nine Cloud Dream by Kim Man-jung | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
- ^ "Introduction to Kuunmong: The Cloud Dream of the Nine | Kurodahan Press". www.kurodahan.com. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
- ^ Yetts, W. Perceval (April 1925). "The Cloud Dream of the Nine. By Kim Man-choong. Translated by J. S. Gale. 8¾ × 5½, 307 pp. + 16 illustrations. London : D. O'Connor, 1922". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 57 (2): 355–356. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00068982. ISSN 2051-2066. S2CID 163078843.
- ^ Kim, Man-Choong (2016). The Cloud Dream of the Nine. Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ISBN 9788993360844.
- ^ Yetts, W (April 1925). "The Cloud Dream of the Nine". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 57 (2): 355–356. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00068982. S2CID 163078843.
- ^ Ian Philip McGreal Great literature of the Eastern World: the major works of prose 1996 Page 429 "One proclaims that The Cloud Dream of the Nine was originally written in Korean and later translated into Chinese. The other insists on the opposite view, arguing that the oldest extant woodblock version that can be found today is written in ..."
- ^ Peter H. Lee Sourcebook of Korean Civilization: From the 17th century to the ... 1996 -- Volume 2 - Page 11 "Koreans still wrote poetry in classical Chinese, conforming to rigid Chinese rhyme schemes, but they also wrote more and ... and novel-length stories that deliberately blurred the line between the real and the imagined (A Nine Cloud Dream)."
- ^ Peter H. Lee, William Theodore De Bary Francisca Cho Bantly Embracing Illusion: Truth and Fiction in The Dream of the Nine Clouds- 1996
- ^ Sources of Korean Tradition: from the sixteenth to the twentieth ... - 2000 -- Page 10 "... deliberately blurred the line between the real and the imagined (A Nine Cloud Dream). Those seventeenth-century stories may have been originally written in classical Chinese, but hangul versions were circulating by the eighteenth century, "
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