Between Principles and Arts: Rethinking the Contemporary Prose during Ming-Qing Transition from the Perspective of the History of Knowledge

Abstract

As a standard genre for classical essays in the civil examination, the contemporary prose (also known as the eight-legged essay during the Ming and Qing dynasties) combined classical exegesis and literary creation. Due to the “representative speech style” of the genre, scholars could represent the classics without rigidly adhering to the classics, and thus could accommodate the classics to their own literary theory. The style of contemporary prose was determined by multiple factors, such as ideology, academic trends, and a scholar’s background. During the Ming-Qing transition, the style of contemporary prose changed rapidly. By rediscovering ancient texts beyond Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, scholars competed to find knowledge sources to renew the paradigm. As a result, the knowledge world of the scholars expanded, and the orthodox interpretations were also counter-influenced. The style of contemporary prose was not merely changing with the academic trends step by step but rather had its own agenda, showing an alternative narrative to the elite intellectual world, which had taken Confucian-Classicism and Neo-Confucianism as the main line.

Keywords

contemporary prose / civil examination / archaism / Ming-Qing transition

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Higher Education Press