Where literature and history meet
How a Wise Slave Lives - Aesop's Fables
A citizen does not flatter a tyrant - Aeschylus' "Agamemnon"
Gaining Wisdom Through Suffering - Aeschylus' Oresteia Trilogy
A fatal medieval love story - Tristan and Izz
A Massive Restructuring of the Afterlife - Dante's Purgatorio from the Divine Comedy
A World of Human Love that Transcends Death - Boccaccio's Decameron
The Arab Commercial World and Literature - Sinbad the Sailor and Sinbad the Porter
Bushido is about dying - 『Shushingura』
Fairy Tale Wedding Stories - "Bluebeard" and "The White Bird"
Pugachev's Rebellion and Pushkin - Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter
The French Revolution, the Empire, and Women - Madame Stahl's "Corinna"
A Coming-of-Age Novel in the Age of Imperialism - Robert Stevenson's Treasure Island
He who rules the sea rules the world - Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
A soul as free as a cedar tree - Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and "Walden"
From the Author of "The Stars" to a Patriotic Poet - A Collection of Short Stories by Alphonse Daudet
The cultural icon that dominated the 20th century - Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan
The dark power of the East threatening the West - Bram Stoker's Dracula
A Journey into a Dark Future - H.G. Wells' The Time Machine
Awakening to the World's Great Soul - John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
A Poetic Commentary on 20th-Century History - Brecht's "The Sorrow of the Survivor"
Darkness in the Age of Nuclear War - William Golding's Lord of the Flies
The Pure Love that Survived the Madness of the Cultural Revolution - Wei Hua's "The Story of Selling Blood"

Encountering History in the World of Literature
There is no subject better than history for understanding how the world works.
So people look back and reflect on past history.
The paths that humans have taken in each era and space have become history, and countless lives have come and gone along those paths.
But no matter how vividly it is written, historical records cannot help but be fact-based.
It is not enough to fully recreate the human scent, breath, and flashes of the spirit.
Ultimately, true restoration of history is impossible, and the gaps between the lines of records can only be filled with imagination and interpretation.

In times like these, literary works born with the spirit of the times continue to be passed down, becoming a kaleidoscope that shows us parts that are difficult to obtain from historical records.
People who lived in previous eras, and the writers (individual writers or the people) who recreated them in literary works, have expressed their emotions, experiences, and knowledge of their lives, and their intimate inner thoughts about how they responded to the outside world, in various ways in their literary works.

『Reading History through Literature, Reading Literature through History』 is a literary and historical story told through twenty-three works of Western literature by Professor Joo Kyung-chul (Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Department of Western History, Seoul National University), who has written several historical textbooks with a deep insight into the fields of Western history and Western cultural history.
You might think that factual history and emotional literature don't go together, but even without considering the cultural-historical method, which is a non-political historical research method, we have already understood history and sensed the times through literary works.
As a historian, the author reads literary works with the intention of understanding the history and people of the past more closely.
This book is the result of that work.


The backstory of history pieced together through twenty-three literary works
The author selects works by period from ancient Greece to modern China and attempts a cross-reading of literature and history.
Literary works that everyone has likely heard of at least once but have not always been easy to read are interpreted and reconstructed through the author's keen eye, providing a fresh, enjoyable experience and literary and historical richness.

Thus, Aesop's Fables allows us to see a cross-section of Greek society from the perspective of slaves, a perspective somewhat different from that previously seen, and gives us food for thought.
In Dante's "Divine Comedy," the "Purgatorio" section shows how the afterlife was restructured by adding purgatory to the dichotomy of heaven and hell, and how this was reflected in literary works.
In "Shinchurra," it shows how Japanese Bushido was formed and culturally expanded and reproduced to reach the present day, and it provides commentary on the meaning of seppuku and the glorification of death.
In "Treasure Island," the history of the relationship between the state and pirates is described through the lens of the first era of overseas expansion during the era of modern imperialism.

Meanwhile, through “Bluebeard” and “White Bird,” it introduces how fairy tales and folk tales can be included in historical narratives.
"Bluebeard" and "White Bird" have similar plots, but they are set in different regions and eras and contain very different content and messages.
Historians analyze these things to understand the nature and values ​​of people in the past.

In addition, it uncovers and tells the hidden historical backgrounds of literary works that have had a great influence on the world, such as Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," and Burroughs' "Tarzan." It also illuminates how painful history is projected onto the human spirit and expressed in works such as Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man," Brecht's "The Sorrows of the Survivor," and Wei Hua's "The Story of a Blood Merchant."

By the time you finish reading this book, you will have a completely different perspective than when you read a history book. You will have a holistic sense that history is truly a path that countless people have walked for a long time, and you will have the strange experience of seeing each and every one of those people's footsteps unfold before your eyes like a panorama.
It is the result of a meeting between literary sensibility and historical perspective.

In this way, 『Reading History through Literature, Reading Literature through History』 is a book that presents a new perspective on understanding literary works.
This book allows readers who are captivated by the charm of literature, as well as those who feel somewhat distant from literature, to fully grasp the meaning of the work, while at the same time allowing readers who feel distant from history to enjoyably encounter history through literature.