Jongsook Lee

Jongsook Lee
Born	1952 (age 71–72)
Nationality	South Korea
Occupation(s)	Former professor of English literature at Seoul National University; Professor emerita of the Department of Liberal Arts at Seoul National University
Academic background
Alma mater	Seoul National University (BA, MA) University of Minnesota Twin Cities (PhD)
Academic work
Main interests	William Shakespeare, Renaissance, Translation

In this Korean name, the family name is Lee.

Jongsook Lee (Korean: 이종숙; Hanja: 李鍾淑; Korean pronunciation: [i.dzoŋ.ɕ͈uk]; born 1952) is a South Korean professor emerita in the Department of Liberal Arts at Seoul National University (SNU) and is a translator. She served as a full professor at SNU and as a visiting professor at University of Oxford and Cambridge. She also served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University and was affiliated with the Folger Shakespeare Library. She studied William Butler Yeats for her master’s degree under the guidance of her advisor Professor Donggyu Hwang and researched Ben Jonson’s poesis for her doctoral degree with Thomas Clayton as her supervisor. Lee is well known in Korea for her media appearance on the Education Broadcasting System (EBS) where she lectured on Shakespeare, titled Shakespeare, the Birth of Tragedy.

Education

1974 Bachelor’s degree in English Education from Seoul National University

1977 Master’s degree in Modern English Poetry from Seoul National University

1985 Doctor’s degree in Renaissance English Literature from University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Career and associations

1985- Member of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea (ELLAK)

1985- Member of Shakespeare Association of Korea (SAK)

1985- Member of Scholars for English Studies in Korea (SESK)

1991 Editor at the Korean Society of Greco-Roman Studies

1991 Consultant and advisor at Korea Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (KAMEMES)

1996–2018 Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Seoul National University

2002 Former advisor and consultant for the Journal of Humanities at the Institute of Humanities at Seoul National University (SNUIH)

2018 Professor Emerita of the College of Liberal Arts at Seoul National University

Academic Works

On Translation of English into Korean in 1990s

In her comment of the book The Last Waltz in Santiago: And Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance (산띠아고에서의 마지막 왈츠, 1998), which was written by Ariel Dorfman and translated into Korean by Lee, she defines the process of translation as “fixation of a word with no regard to its diffusional meaning it gains when settled in the context and form of the poem.” While she acknowledges this difficulty in translation, in her journal article “The World of Translation, ‘Translation-vogue’, and Translational Guidebooks (번역, ‘번역바람’, 번역지침서의 세계)”, Lee points out that Korean scholars tend to belittle the importance of scientific and efficient English learning in spite of the increasing public interest in English translation into Korean, leading people to depend on guiding books that are still erroneous.She argues that “mistranslated literature mingled with commercialism can pollute not only common literature but even canonized works that are located at the center of anglophone culture.” This argument was valiant in the Korean academic field because pointing out the mistranslation or plagiarism of other scholars was deemed “indelicate” it was considered to be “indelicate”. In her consecutive journal article “In Response to Mr. Park Jung Kook’s Objection (박정국씨의 반론에 대한 답변)”, Lee displays her faith in translation as a way to protect Korean tradition against the intrusion of foreign culture, and to open a new, wide perspective towards the world. She also promotes extensive reading for better translation that can fulfill the cultural appetite of the public.

Criticism on Sang Sup Lee’s Understanding of Renaissance

While acknowledging the endeavor of Sang Sup Lee to define the progress of English literatures studies in Korea, Lee criticizes his understanding of the Renaissance for being limited which was written in his Review on Renaissance and Neoclassicism, 1530~1800 (르네상스와 신고전주의 비평: 1530~1800, 1985). In Lee’s book review titled “A Korean Study of English Literature: An Example (영문학의 한국적 연구: 그 일례, 1985)”, she points out that he is poorly relating Renaissance to Neoclassicism by overlooking the continental root of English literature. According to Lee, he did not put enough pages on Ben Jonson whose role was to connect the Renaissance and Neoclassicism, which shows Lee Sang Sup’s lack of appreciation of Jonson’s position as a defender of poetry. Lee, as a Renaissance scholar, also argues that his description of Jonson as a neoclassicist cannot be compatible based on what the poet left on his Sejanus and Volpone.

On Shakespearean Revenge Plays

In dealing with an “obsession” within Western plays, Lee explores the concept of rage and revenge through Aristotle and Seneca and indicates that Shakespearean tragedies do not deviate from this large outline of Greek philosophy. As his early work Titus Andronicus does, Hamlet includes both Aristotelian and Senecan perspective on revenge, although it further develops to dissolve the fundamental need of revenge. According to Lee, Hamlet acknowledges that “every death includes God’s intention,” transcending people’s passion towards Utopia from rage and revenge on an individual.

On the Relationship between South Korea and Shakespeare

Lee suggests to contemplate on the cultural universality and historicity in globalized Korea, meeting the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Mentioning Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s and Harold Bloom’s assertion that “Shakespeare invented the human” which, in Lee’s words, means that he “has first recognized us as human beings and described it in his works,” thus teaching us “what humanity is.” While she points out that this “humanity” reflects only Western perspective, she proposes that Koreans cannot ignore the influence of “Western humanity that was educated and invented by Shakespeare” on their national characteristics now that it is impossible to “separate Korean culture from that of the West.”

Media Appearances

In Shakespeare: The Birth of Tragedy (EBS), Lee states that literature is always about human life, which is the continuation of Renaissance humanistic point of view. She argues that great works are those that relate the world-inner to the world-outer, which thus elicit one’s self-awareness and self-reflection. According to Lee, Shakespeare’s works are texts that bring out those great works in that they create moments where characters realize their ego, directly and indirectly describing the sense of self-awareness and self-reflection to readers.

Awards and Honors

1990 Folger Shakespeare Library Junior Fellowship

1991 Harvard-Yenching Visiting Fellowship

1994 Jaenam Thesis Award, which is only granted to new scholars by ELLAK

1999 Cambridge Visiting Fellowship

2000 Cambridge Life Membership

2007 Seoul National University Twenty-year Serving Commendation

2017 Seoul National University Thirty-year Serving Commendation

Works

Books

• Lee, Jongsook. (1989). Ben Jonson’s Poesis: A Literary Dialectic of Ideal and History. Virginia: University Press of Virginia.
• Lee, Jongsook et al. (2004). English Literature in Times of Globalization (지구화 시대의 영문학). Seoul: Changbi Publishers.
• Lee, Jongsook et al. (2014). Greatest Lecture on Humanities: Western Classics (인문학 명강: 서양고전). Seoul: Book21.
• Lee, Jongsook et al. (2015). The Death of Middle Ages (중세의 죽음). Seoul: Sanbooks.

Journal articles

• Jongsook, Lee. (1986). “A Korean Study of English Literature: An Example”. Yelumsa. 354-358.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1988). “Fact and Fiction in Ben Jonson’s Epideictic Poetry”. Journal of Humanities. 55-74.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1989). “Why Bakhtin? Openness and Volkstumlichkeit in Novels”. Munhakgwajiseongsa. 186-196.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1994). “Shakespearean Audiences as Popular Editors”. Changbi Publishers.144-168.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1994). “History and Literature: The Historicalness of Shakespeare’s Historical Dramas”. Journal of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance English Literature.143-164.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1995). “What is Literature? Is it a Revolutionary Power of Modern Criticism Theory?” Changbi Publishers. 386-389.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1995). “Tacitus and Tacitism in Renaissance England”. Greco-Roman Studies. 101-132.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1997). “The World of Translation, ‘Translation-vogue’, and Translational Guidebooks”. Changbi Publishers. 228-243.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1997). “The Restoration Shakespeare: Shakespeare Adaptations by Sir William Davenant and John Dryden”. Sungkok Scholar-Cultural Foundation. 277-310.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1997). “Shakespeare, Thou art Translated! Shakespeare in Korea, 1906-1945”. Seoul Journal of Korean Studies. 65-80.
• Jongsook, Lee. (1998). “Colonial Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Korea, 1906-1945”. Shakespeare Review. 115-141.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2001). “Renaissance Plays as a Reaction to the Reformation: Anti-Spain, Shakespeare, and Calderon”. Journal of Humanities. 67-118.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2002). “Gender and Translation in Early Modern England”. Journal of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance English Literature. 169-181.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2003). “Euripides in England: Domestic Tragedy in England”. In/Outside: English Studies in Korea. 256-290.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2005). “Shakespearean Intertextuality and Representation of Emotion, or Reading Ophelia in Aeneas’ Way.” In/Outside: English Studies in Korea. 8-43.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2006). “The Birth of ‘Female Author’? From Iphigenia to Mariam”. Scholars for English Studies in Korea, 2006. 115-157.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2011). “The History of Rage, Revenge, and Revenge Tragedy”. Journal of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance English Literature. 183-220.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2014). “Numinous or Dead? Real Presence, Iconoclasm, and Pygmalion’s image in Shakespeare”. Journal of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance English Literature.49-67.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2014). “The Moving Stone Statue and Shakespearean Culture War”.In/Outside: English Studies in Korea. 14-42.
• Jongsook, Lee. (2016). “Universality and Historicity of Culture—On the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Death”. Orbis Sapientiae. 1-11.

Translations

• 산띠아고에서의 마지막 왈츠: 유배와 증발의 시편 (1998). (Last Waltz in Santiago: And Other Poems of Exile, 1988.) Changbi Publishers (ISBN13 9788936470463)
• 경계선 다시긋기 (1998). (Redrawing the Boundaries, 1992.) H.S Media (ISBN 9788934805045)
• Virtual Reality: Poems of Kim Young Moo (2005). (가상현실, 2005.) Dapge (ISBN 9788975741845)
• 그 시절 (2023). (The Years, 2020.) Kang (ISBN 9788982183270)

Media appearances

• Educational Broadcasting System (EBS), Shakespeare: The Birth of Tragedy (2016).
• Naver Educational Lecture, Making a Global Star out of Shakespeare (2022).