This historical anthology of Korean poetry, Ancient, Medieval, and Premodern Korean Songs and Poems highlights the evolution of poetic composition in the vernacular. The book is a manifesto of the uniquely Korean poetic tradition, which flourished quite separately along with the literary tradition retained by the men of letters devoted to the scholarship in classical Chinese. The beauty of the Korean language and the tradition of verse-making in it are sumptuously demonstrated by this book, which contains both the original texts in the unique Korean orthography of phonograms and the translator’s English version that runs in parallel with the original poems.

Sung-Il Lee, Professor Emeritus at Yonsei University, taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto (1987) and the University of Washington (1994‒1995), and as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Troy University (2002‒2003). His major publication on English literature includes Beowulf in Parallel Texts (2017), which contains his Modern English verse translation running in parallel with the Old English text.

Introduction
Part I: Ancient Songs and Poems: Kayo, Hyang-ga, and Secular Songs
Part II: Kasa, Long Poems in the Vein of Prose
Part III: Shijo, Occasional and Impromptu Short Poems
Commentaries and Notes
About the Translator
Index of Authors and Works