<사씨남정기>와 <금병매>는 인간의 현실적 욕망 즉 인정물태에 주목하기 시작한 본격적인 작품이라는 점에서도 닮아있다. <금병매>에 대한 역사적 평어(評語)로서, ‘세정서(世情書)’는 ‘세정’ 즉 인정물태를 중심으로 하는 서사이다. 따라서 세정소설은 보통 사람들, 특히 여성들의 생활공간과 그 안에서 발생하는 일상 및 갈등을 중심으로 다양한 인간행태를 기술한 작품이라 하겠다. <사씨남정기>와 <금병매>에서 포착되는 세정소설적 면모는 한국과 중국은 물론 동아시아 문학이 공유하는 서사전통의 기반 중 하나이다. 그러므로, 세정소설에 대한 논의는 동아시아의 서사전통을 중심으로 한 공동의 서사학을 모색하는 데 기여할 것이다.When taking a look at Korean?Chinese classic novel history, it seems that personally created-novels having outstanding literary skills appeared suddenly after historic collective heritages or queer short narratives. The representative works are Sassinamjeonggi and Jinpingmei. They are regarded as the highest peak of each nation's novel history, having a great effect on the subsequent novels. In addition, they have something in common with each other in that they used their own native tongue rather than the medieval universal language as a means of writing, displayed differentiating level not only in the creative technique but in the world view they contain and led the full-blown novel age.
Sassinamjeonggi and Jinpingmei have also common things as the works which began to take notice of the human actual desire, or human beings' private and social life. As the historic critical remark on Jinpingmei, ‘Writing of Manners’ is a narrative centered on ‘Manners’, in other words, human beings' private and social life. Therefore, Novels of Manners may be said as works describing the various human behaviors based on every day affairs and conflicts occurred in the living space of ordinary people, especially women. Characteristic aspects of Novels of Manners, shown from Sassinamjeonggi and Jinpingmei, are one of the basis of the narrative tradition East-Asia's literature including Korea and China's share together. So, it's thought that discussion about Novels of Manners will be able to contribute on groping for common narratology centered on the narrative tradition of East Asia.