The Historical Characteristics of Munjip Editing and its Organization

A Munjip, a collection of literary works, includes not only authors life and the thought, but also the atmosphere of the times that the author belongs to. That is why we should treat them significantly not only in researching of the authors individual thought, career and literature, but also of politics, thoughts and the view of literature at that times. There are various kinds of organization of Munjip. In most cases it divides the whole works into poetry and prose and lines up poetry in chronological order and classifies prose by the style of writing. There are of course some exceptional cases for certain reasons. And in many cases supplement was added, say a chronological list of authors life, related works of his fellows, and criticism of descendants etc. The styles in Munjip changes according to the demands of the times and historical backgrounds. For examples 15 pieces of Jesa in the 15 volume of gyewon-pilgyeong-jip reveal the aspect of taoism of Tang dynasty. these works created new traditions of composing Jesa among literati in Song and Goryeo period. There are some cases that Munjip in Joseon period establishes separately the style of Sangryangmun(a writing for the ceremony of putting up the ridge beam). It was the result of influence from China on one hand, and of the change of domestic situation that the ceremony was prevalent for social cohesion under official recognition on the other. Editors of Munjip aims to collect the authors whole works. However, not a few works are omitted as theres also a tendency to select certain works under a certain editorial intention. In most cases it is due to (a) the contradiction between the intention of collecting the whole works and of keeping a certain editorial intention (b) the limit of information caused by classification of style (c) the question of Korean style Hanmun. There are also lots of cases that Munjip doesnt remain or remain incomplete because of political reasons. We need to collect the related literature and to establish open text with chronological order