중국과 조선의 법률문화와 범죄소설의 계보학

This paper explores a close link between law and literature in late imperial China and Chosŏn Korea. Apart from the official legal code, a wide variety of legal literature ranging from case records to court case fiction were produced in late imperial China and Chosŏn Korea. More surprisingly, even Chinese court case fiction called gong’an was read as a kind of legal literature providing with useful information on law and legal proceedings. A genre of legal literature produced in traditional society deserves our particular attention in examining the meaning of reading law as literature in the context of Confucian legal culture. My focus in this paper is shifted from Chinese case literature and Ming court case fiction to the reception of Ming court case fiction in the context of Korean legal culture, in particular, to a case of Chŏng Yagyong(1762-1836)’s Hŭmhŭm sinsŏ (A new book on penal law). What Chŏng actually attempted for the accomplishment of Confucian humanitarianism in criminal justice in his book was not entirely juridical but more literary: it relied more heavily on a wide variety of literary and historical sources including Confucian classics, official historiography, case histories, biji writing, and vernacular fiction than on legal statutes themselves. Obviously, in selecting the cases, the truthfulness of a case was not considered by the author as the most significant element. Not unlike other Confucian scholars, he also showed much interest in the overall legal proceedings including preparing for legal documents and case reports.