The Sick Rose

• Author(s): Lee Hyoseok,
• Publisher: Literature Translation Institute of Korea
• Pages: 16
• ISBN_10: 8993360529
  ISBN_13: 9788993360523
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Literary Collections / General , Literary Collections / Asian / General ,

Description:... “The Sick Rose,” published in Samcheonli munhak (Three Thousand Li of Literature) in 1938, is the first of two short stories that Lee Hyoseok names using the title of a poem in English. This one, of course, is named after a poem by William Blake. The other is “Leaves of Grass” titled after Walt Whitman’s seminal collection. Both short stories borrow themes from the poems they are named after. In the case of “The Sick Rose” the theme is prostitution and the venereal disease that can accompany the practice. Typical of Lee’s later literature, this story uses the theme of sex as a means to critique what he saw as a hypocritical sense of morality in Korean society.