Jiācáng jí 家藏集
Family-Treasured Collection by 吳寬 (撰)
About the work
The self-edited biéjí of Wú Kuān 吳寬 (1435–1504), zì Yuánbó 原博, hào Páoān 匏菴 / Páowēng 匏翁, posthumously shì Wéndìng 文定, of Chángzhōu 長洲 (Sūzhōu, Jiāngsū). Wú was zhuàngyuán of Chénghuà 8 (1472), tutor of the future Hóngzhì emperor (then Crown Prince), and rose to Lǐbù shàngshū. The collection — under the SBCK title Páowēng jiācáng jí in 70 juǎn (poetry 30 juǎn, prose 40 juǎn); the WYG and catalog version reckons 77 juǎn with the prose volumes counted differently and zhūbǎn (extra) materials added — was personally edited by Wú in his lifetime as jiācáng (family-treasured), and posthumously printed at the capital by his son Wú Shē 吳奭 (zhōngshū shèrén) under the direction of Lǐ Dōngyáng 李東陽 (李東陽), whose preface dates the printing to a year after Wú’s death (poetry first; prose volumes a few months later). Wú’s literary-historical importance lies in the Sūzhōu Wú-school calligraphic and literary circle: he was the teacher of Wén Zhēngmíng 文徵明, an elder colleague of Shěn Zhōu 沈周, and an associate of Zhù Yǔnmíng (祝允明 KR4e0147) and Wáng Áo (王鏊 KR4e0133).
Tiyao
Abstract
Wú Kuān’s Jiācáng jí is the central documentary site for the Sūzhōu Wú-school (吳派 / 吳門) of mid-Míng literature and calligraphy. Wú’s role as tutor of the future Xiàozōng (Hóngzhì emperor) gave him the political weight that his pupil Wén Zhēngmíng and his successor at the head of the Sūzhōu literary circle, Zhù Yǔnmíng (祝允明), would extend in the Hóngzhì–Zhèngdé era. The fact that Wú self-edited the collection in his lifetime under the title jiācáng (family-treasured), and that Lǐ Dōngyáng — the simultaneous head of the Chángshā (Húguǎng) literary establishment and Senior Grand Secretary — wrote the preface for the posthumous capital-printing, is one of the cleanest documentary signals of how the Wú-school / Lǐ Dōngyáng axis ran the Hóng-zhì-era literary world. The eponymous hào Páowēng (Calabash-Elder) — from the Lǐjì Áo lemma — is the Sìkù-canonical reference to him.
The SBCK 70-juǎn recension and the WYG 77-juǎn recension differ in their internal tǐ-divisions of the prose volumes; both descend from Wú’s lifetime self-edition. The 30 juǎn of poetry, ordered by year and month rather than by form, is unusual in Míng biéjí practice: the Sìkù tradition normally re-sorts poetry by tǐ (form) in editing — Wú’s biographical-chronological ordering, preserved by his son, is a deliberate refusal of that convention.
The catalog meta dates the persons of Wú Kuān as 1435–1504; CBDB id 33465 matches exactly.
Translations and research
- L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976: major notice of Wú Kuān.
- Míng shǐ j. 184 — Wú Kuān biography.
- Anne Burkus-Chasson, The Gallery of Eccentrics: Imagining the Fortunes of a Painting at the End of the Ming (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2010) — context for the Wú-school.
- Craig Clunas, Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644 (London: Reaktion, 2007) — for the Sū-zhōu Wú-mén milieu.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28 (Míng bié-jí).
Other points of interest
The chronological (year-and-month) ordering of Wú’s 30 juǎn of poetry — preserved by his son and by Lǐ Dōngyáng’s editorial supervision — is one of the cleaner mid-Míng cases of biographical-chronological poetry ordering surviving against the Sìkù-era tendency to fēntǐ (sort by form). The SBCK preservation of this order is one reason the SBCK is preferred for Wú over the WYG by modern editors.