Title: Exploring the “Joy of the Benevolent” in Yulgok’s Gosan Gugokga

Abstract: Within the intellectual context of Joseon Confucianism and the tradition of Neo-Confucian poetry, Yulgok Yi I’s Gosan Gugokga has often been regarded as a poetic articulation of the “joy of the benevolent” central to Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism. Existing scholarship has largely emphasized its continuity with Zhu Xi’s legacy, with less attention paid to how the “joy of the benevolent” is generatively enacted through poetic structure and aesthetic practice. This study situates Gosan Gugokga within the contexts of Confucian ethics of benevolence and Neo-Confucianism, and systematically investigates the poem’s articulation of the “joy of the benevolent.” It proposes an internal progressive structure: “shared joy-joy in following principle-joy in propagating the Way.” Yulgok does not confine the “joy of the benevolent” to an inner state attained after moral cultivation. Instead, through the integration of the nine-bend structure, landscape travel, and the act of singing, he transforms this joy into an experiential, shareable, and pedagogically oriented poetic process. Thus, Gosan Gugokga not only presents a poetic transformation of Neo-Confucian ethical concepts but also offers a distinctive intellectual exploration of the ethical and aesthetic dimensions within Joseon Confucianism.

Keywords: Yulgok Yi I, Gosan Gugokga, joy of the benevolent, Neo-Confucian poetry, Joseon Confucianism

Authors: Chengri Piao, Professor, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China; Qianru Ding, Ph.D. Candidate, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2026.02.016