Poems and Stories for Overcoming Idleness

Poems and Stories for Overcoming Idleness is the first complete translation in any Western language of P’ahan chip , the earliest Korean work of sihwa (C. shihua ; “remarks on poetry”) and one of the oldest extant Korean sources. The collection was written and compiled by Yi Illo (1152–1220) during the mid-Koryǒ dynasty (918–1392). P’ ahan chip features poetry composed in Literary Chinese (the scriptura franca of the premodern East Asian “Sinographic Sphere”) by the author and his friends, which