With his annotated translation of P'aegwan chapki by O Sukkwon (fl. 1525-54), Peter Lee orients his readers in the historically and culturally revealing genre of literary miscellany chapki that flourished in Yi Korea from the fifteenth century onward. A precursor of narrative fiction, chapki employed a first-person viewpoint to present not only biographical and autobiographical information but also critiques of poetry, character sketches, random jottings, and tales. Lee's introduction discusses the rhetorical devices, style, and structure of The Storyteller's Miscellany then analyzes favored topics in the literary miscellany as it was generally practiced throughout East Asia and particularly in O Sukkwon's Korean work.
Lee finds that literary miscellany, as opposed to formal and canonical East Asian prose genres, was best suited to the presentation of the self. In his study he discusses how a narrator's critical stance and creation of lifelike characters in an eyewitness style contributed to the development of narrative fiction.
