Scenes from the Enlightenment

Description

An account of seemingly trivial events—a wedding between two respected families, the arrival of box upon box of new Western products at the general store, a long-awaited athletics meet at a local school—Scenes from the Enlightenment: A Novel of Manners is the story of a country on the cusp of modernity.

First published in 1939, Kim Namcheon’s classic text, through the close, quiet study of a single nineteenth-century village, tracks Korea’s early development from a society bound by the rules of family, rank, and gender toward a ‘new-style,’ enlightened, Wester­nised nation, complete with bicycles and newly built roads.

On the surface an elegantly turned and acutely observed so­cial comedy, Scenes delves into the conflict between tradition and progress, and reveals how it affected the lives of those who lived through this time of change.