A Reexamination of the Commercially Publication of Woodblock-printed Sodaeseongjeon in the Seoul Area

Until now, variations in the woodblock-printed Sodaeseongjeon have primarily been examined in terms of the reduction in the number of folios, focusing only on a transformation in a single direction-toward fewer physical leaves. As a result, there has been insufficient explanation for cases where versions with fewer folios actually contain longer or more numerous sentences. This paper re-examines the patterns of variation in the woodblock-printed Sodaeseongjeon by comparing the narrative volume and distribution based on character count across the 36-folio, 24-folio, 23-folio, and 20-folio editions, and by conducting sentence-by-sentence comparisons between the 36- and 23-folio versions, as well as between the 24- and 20-folio versions. First, a comparison of character counts per half-leaf shows that the 24-folio edition contains less narrative content than the 20-folio edition, and that in the 20-folio edition, even though the number of characters per half-leaf decreases in sections up to folio 11, the total narrative volume actually increases. Furthermore, a comparison of character counts by narrative segment reveals that the 20-folio edition includes more characters than the 36-folio edition in parts such as “Reliance on Cheongnyong Temple” and “The Invasion by the Barbarian King,” and that the 36-folio edition shows a relatively balanced distribution between the former and latter halves of the text. Next, to more precisely identify how the text changed across versions, sentence-level comparisons were made between the 23- and 36-folio editions, as well as between the 24- and 20-folio editions. These comparisons revealed that the added lines in the 20-folio edition resemble those in the 36-folio edition, particularly in their tendency to include more concrete descriptions, frequent use of conventional phrases, and the presence of passages that appear inconsistent with the narrative context. Based on these findings, it is inferred that the added lines in the 36-folio edition may have been intended to cater to a wider range of reader preferences.