---

Korean Studies at the University of Copenhagen Denmark welcomes everyone to the hybrid book talk:

“Reading and Translating Chosŏn-Ming Relations: A Consideration of Tributary English" with Joshua Van Lieu (Associate Professor of History, Keimyung University)

Date and time: September 19, 2024: 10:30-12:00 (Copenhagen time)

Venue: South Campus, University of Copenhagen, 15A.0.13

or on Zoom: link above

Abstract

In the spring of 1537, Ming envoys carrying an imperial proclamation arrived on the Chosŏn frontier. The envoys and their Chosŏn hosts spent the next six weeks traveling from the frontier to Seoul and back again, attending banquets and functions all along the way. Likely compiled by the Chosŏn Reception Commission staff, Travel Log of the Celestial Envoys (天使一路日記) is a daily account of this journey that includes lodgings, ceremonies, conversations, entertainment, protocol negotiations, and the lengths to which the Chosŏn hosts went to satisfy their sometimes petulant Ming guests. A facile reading and translation of this text suggests a Chosŏn state committed to a righteous submission to the Ming court and to the visions of civilization such submission implies. Indeed, as the text was compiled for a readership within the Chosŏn bureaucracy, one may well understand it as a submission narrative the state prepared about itself for itself. A more complete understanding of the text and how to approach the production of an English translation, however, must be informed by the dual contexts of internal Chosŏn bureaucratic politics and the performative practices through which the Chosŏn court exercised diplomatic agency in its deeply asymmetrical relationship with the Ming Empire.