Chŏng Yagyong (1762-1836), or simply Tasan, is a prolific poet and one of the most brilliant minds in Korean history but remains unknown as a person.This book introduces his life through his own auto-biographical poems translated into English for the first time.
Here we find him struggling between love of learning and exam hell, between aristocratic pride and economic hardship, between Catholic sympathies and Confucian heritage, and finally between two women.
Astonishingly open about himself for his time and class, this vivid portrait of his is a triumph of self-expression the likes of which we have not seen in premodern Korean literature.