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About this talk

The Confucian Classics have long been read as sources of philosophical and moral authority. Yet their authority was sustained not only through what they taught, but also through how they were read. This talk explores rhetorical exegesis —close attention to language, literary form, textual structure, and rhetorical technique—as a distinctive mode of engaging with the Classics across premodern East Asia. Beginning with a comparative overview of China, Korea, and Japan, it then focuses on Chosŏn Korea, where scholars developed particularly sophisticated practices of rhetorical reading and commentary. Building on my Korean-language monograph, Kyŏngjŏn ŭi suhak 經典의 修辭學 ( The Rhetoric of the Classics ), and extending its arguments toward questions of canonicity and sacrality, the talk argues that the Classics’ sacred authority was not simply given but continually produced and reproduced through such exegetical practices. Header image: Wi Paek-kyu’s notes on the Mencius in his Toksŏ ch’aŭi 讀書箚義, an example of exegetical reading in late Chosŏn Korea.

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