A History of Korean Literature has been written to meet the needs of students and general readers who wish to know the main outline of Korean literature. It reflects the latest scholarship on all genres and periods and traces the development of Korean literature – encompassing literary works written in the hyangch'al system, literary Chinese, and the vernacular after the invention of the Korean alphabet in the mid fifteenth century. Unlike Chinese and Japanese literature, however, a large number of Korean classical works are not yet available in translation. Thus, translations presented here are mostly my own. Unlike other literary histories, we have avoided current jargon or theory because we want this history to be useful for more than a decade. When contemporary theory and criticism are useful in reading a text, however, we have employed it. Throughout, we are mindful that this is a narrative history of Korean literature, combining both history and criticism, addressed to the English-speaking reader. Topics in the general introduction include canon and ideology, traditional generic hierarchy, and other critical issues central to an understanding of Korean literary history. We have allotted more space to twentieth-century literature, but here the names swarm and the treatment is inevitably cursory. Minor figures are omitted so that attention may be focused on major writers and their representative works, the ones most likely to be read.