Abstract

This paper was attempted to study development and characteristics of the Discourse on Chu Si's Family Ritual as a part of continuous research works on the ritual thought in the middle Chosun. The discourse held by Korean intellectuals of the 16th century became first a mechanism driving out buddhism rooted into the contemporary everyday life, and then stood as a symbol of the filial piety by stressing individual excessive sorrow even injurious to health, but gradually turned the direction of their concern to more detailed practical matters of the courtesy, which resulted in strengthening the clan rules and patriarchal system. Lee Hwang and other intellectuals asking questions about the funeral and sacrificial rituals to him, however, shows the efforts trying to exclude the absolute authority and open the mind to the contemporary customs through reserving manifestation of their solid standpoints. It means the discourse aimed at reaching the balance and harmony of the rituals, which coincide with the principles of the righteousness without injuring the human feeling. However, cultural receptions appeared in Yulnyojun, Biographies of the Faithful Ladies, looks seemingly like inclining toward the principles of the righteousness until the first half of the 17th century, but as a matter of the fact it shows the distance from the discourses by concentrating excessively on human feelings even sacrificing the lives rather than keeping the norms and the formalities of the rituals strictly.