Míngkē wén chūbiān 茗柯文初編
Míng-kē Prose, Initial Edition by 張惠言 (撰)
About the work
The principal collected-prose recension of 張惠言 Zhāng Huìyán (1761–1802, zì Gāowén 皋文, hào Míngkē 茗柯, native of Wǔjìn 武進, Chángzhōu, Jiāngsū) — the great Chángzhōu Yúshì Yì 虞氏易 specialist and, with 惲敬 Yùn Jìng KR4f0063, co-founder of the Yánghú 陽湖 prose school; and, with his brother 張琦 Zhāng Qí, founder of the Chángzhōu 常州 cí 詞 school of late-imperial lyric poetry. 1 juan in the chūbiān; the SBCK fascicle additionally preserves the èrbiān (2nd), sānbiān (3rd), and sìbiān (4th) editions, plus the bǔbiān wàibiān (catalogued separately as KR4f0067). The Míngkē wén is short-collection prose — Zhāng died at 42 — but consists almost entirely of high-quality programmatic pieces: classical-exegetical essays (especially on the Zhōu yì via Yú Fān 虞翻’s lost-recovered Hàn commentary, and on the Yílǐ and Zhōu lǐ via Zhèng Xuán), prose-theoretical pieces (the Yú yú 與余 letters), and bēizhì-and-biography for Chángzhōu and Yánghú circle figures. The collection’s principal piece is the Cí xuǎn xù 詞選序 (preface to the Cí xuǎn, the foundational document of the Chángzhōu cí-school program), although that piece circulates also in the Cí xuǎn itself.
Prefaces
The SBCK Míngkē wén opens with two prefaces. The earlier, by 阮元 Ruǎn Yuán, is dated Jiāqìng shísì nián xià 嘉慶十四年夏 (summer 1809, Jiāqìng 14) and accompanies the editio princeps — printed by Zhāng’s friends Lǐ Shēngfū 李生甫 (probably Lǐ Zhàoluò 李兆洛, 1769–1841, the Yánghú scholar) and Zhāng Yúnzǎo 張雲藻 from a 4-juan recension. Ruǎn writes that Zhāng Huìyán “by classical learning made gǔwén” — yǐ jīngshù wéi gǔwén 以經術爲古文 — seeking the xiāoxī (waxing-waning) of yīnyáng in the Zhōu yì via Yú Fān, and the institutions of antiquity in the Yílǐ via Zhèng Xuán; not “borrowing antiquity to self-aggrandize his prose” but treating yì (canonical meaning) as inseparable from wén (literary form): yì zhī fù yú jīng zhě nèi yě, yì zhī zhēng yú wén zhě wài yě 義之附於經者內也、義之徵於文者外也. Ruǎn singles out the Yì xué (Yì studies) of 惠棟 Huì Dòng and the lǐ xué (ritual studies) of 江永 Jiāng Yǒng as the prior-generation models. The later preface is by 曾國藩 Zēng Guófān (1811–1872) dated Tóngzhì bā nián shí yuè Xiāngxiāng Zēng Guófān 同治八年十月湘鄕曾國藩 (tenth month of 1869); it accompanies the reprint by Zhāng’s great-grandson Zhāng DàlìngShìzēng 張大令式曾, who restored the Míngkē wén after the Tàipíng Rebellion (referred to as Yuèzéi 粵賊) had destroyed the original printing blocks and devastated the Chángzhōu / Rùnzhōu region. Zēng identifies two failure-modes of contemporary prose — “high talents who love the strange” who imitate Hàn rhapsodies with archaic words without the strength to drive them, “like a wart or growth, glue applied to a robe — one only sees the unsuitability”; and “biographers who, in eulogizing friends, ascribe all the famous virtues of antiquity to a single person — like a portrait-painter assembling many beauties: imposing yes, but unlike the subject.” Zhāng Huìyán, Zēng holds, avoided both: his prose was kōngmíng chéngchè 空明澄澈 (open-bright, clear-through), neither bóào zìgāo 博奧自高 (proud of erudite obscurity) nor zòngshàn yánmán 縱善延蔓 (lavishly extending praises). On the kǎozhèng movement: Zēng accuses the Hàn xué school of having fánzhēngbóyǐn, kǎo yī zì biàn yī wù, léi shù qiān wàn yán bù néng xiū 繁徵博引、考一字辨一物、累數千萬言不能休 (proliferating citations, exhausting tens of thousands of words on a single character or object) — but allows that Zhāng Huìyán, although working within Hàn-school method on the Zhōu yì and Yílǐ, was xūzhōng yánjiū, jué wú língjià xiānxián zhī yì 虛衷研究、絕無陵駕先賢之意 (humbly engaged, with no thought of overstepping prior masters). Zēng explicitly identifies Zhāng Huìyán’s mode as the gǔ zhī suǒ wèi dà yǎ zhě yǔ 古之所謂大雅者與 (“perhaps what the ancients meant by dà yǎ”).
Abstract
Zhāng Huìyán is a key transitional figure in late-Qiánlóng / early-Jiāqìng intellectual history, the principal node connecting (a) kǎozhèng classical exegesis (he is the foremost Yúshì Yì specialist after 惠棟 Huì Dòng); (b) the Yánghú prose school (founded with Yùn Jìng on the principle of piánsàn integration); and (c) the Chángzhōu cí-school (his and his brother Zhāng Qí’s Cí xuǎn program, articulated in the Cí xuǎn xù, defines the late-imperial lyric tradition through 1900). Jìnshì of Jiāqìng 4 (1799) ranking second in the èrjiǎ; Hànlín biānxiū and editor at the Shílù (Veritable Records) compilation office and the Wǔyīngdiàn 武英殿; appointed xiéxiū 協修 at the Imperial Library; he died young in 1802 at 42, of illness. His major works — all in the SBCK fascicle’s Míngkē wén and the separate technical monographs — are: (1) Zhōu yì Yúshì yì 周易虞氏義 (Yú Fān’s Zhōu yì doctrine reconstructed in 9 juan from quotations); (2) Zhōu yì Yúshì xiāoxī 周易虞氏消息 (the waxing-waning hexagram theory); (3) Yílǐ tú 儀禮圖 (illustrations of the Yílǐ rituals); (4) Cí xuǎn 詞選 (the anthology with critical preface, defining the Chángzhōu cí school); (5) the Míngkē wén in its various editions. Together with his brother 張琦 Zhāng Qí (Wànyán 萬言, 1764–1833, who continued the cí-school program), Zhāng Huìyán established Chángzhōu as the late-imperial alternative to Tóngchéng for serious literati.
The Míngkē wén itself is short on philosophy and rich on bēizhì and xù. Its programmatic essays are: the Wén yì lùn 文義論 (theory of gǔwén meaning); the Cí xuǎn xù (preface to the Cí xuǎn); the Yìshuō 易說 (essays on the Zhōu yì); the Yú Liú Shēnshòu shū 與劉申受書 (letter to 劉逢祿 Liú Fénglù, the Chángzhōu Gōngyáng master); and several zhuàn and bēimíng of Chángzhōu intellectual-circle figures, including the much-cited biography of his teacher 惠言之祖父 (perhaps).
Composition window: c. 1785 (Zhāng’s earliest mature prose) through 1802 (his death). The 1809 imprint by Lǐ Zhàoluò and Zhāng Yúnzǎo with Ruǎn Yuán’s preface is the editio princeps; the 1869 Zhāng Shìzēng / Zēng Guófān reprint is the post-Tài-píng standard recension; the SBCK reproduces the latter, preserving both prefaces.
Translations and research
Theodore Huters, “From Writing to Literature: The Development of Late Qing Theories of Prose,” HJAS 47.1 (1987): 51–96 — covers Zhāng as Yáng-hú co-founder.
Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 1990) — links Zhāng to Cháng-zhōu Gōng-yáng / Liú Féng-lù.
Maureen Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine: Constructions of the Gendered Subject in Lyric Poetry by Women of Medieval and Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 13.1 (1992) — discusses the Cháng-zhōu Cí xuǎn tradition.
Wei Shang, “The Story of the Stone in the Yangtze Delta: Politics of Distance and Literary Society in the Late Qing” — refers to Zhāng’s Cí xuǎn xù.
Pauline Yu, “The Power of Culture in Late Imperial China,” in Culture and the State in Chinese History, ed. Theodore Huters et al. (Stanford, 1997) — Cháng-zhōu cí school context.
Cài Yīng-wén 蔡英文 ed., Zhāng Huì-yán quán-jí 張惠言全集 (Tianjin Guji, 2000s).
Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §28.8 (Qīng prose schools); §28.5 (Qīng cí).
ECCP 42 (Tu Lien-che).
Other points of interest
Zhāng’s Zhōu yì Yúshì yì is one of the most influential single QiánJiā monographs: it reconstructed Yú Fān 虞翻’s (164–233) lost Zhōu yì commentary from fragmentary citations, supplying the proof-of-concept that lost Hàn classical exegesis could be substantively recovered by kǎozhèng methods. The work is the principal model for 惠棟 Huì Dòng’s lineage of Zhōu yì reconstruction and was extended in the later nineteenth century by 焦循 Jiāo Xún and others. Its prefaces, in the Míngkē wén, supply the methodological self-justification of this entire program.
The Tàipíng Rebellion destruction of the original Chángzhōu printing blocks — recorded in Zēng Guófān’s 1869 preface — is documented in several other Chángzhōu / Yángzhōu biéjí prefaces of the same decade; the 1869 reprint represents Zēng’s broader Tóngzhì-era cultural-restoration program, in which the senior statesman of the Qīng restoration personally underwrote the recovery of the Chángzhōu kǎozhèng / Yánghú prose tradition.
Links
- Wikidata Q11125142 (Zhang Huiyan)
- ECCP 42
- Wilkinson 2018, §28.5, §28.8
- CBDB id 34226 (1761–1802)