文說

Wén shuō 文說

Discussions of Prose by 陳繹曾 (撰)

About the work

The Wén shuō 文說, in one juǎn, is an early-Yuán handbook on the writing of prose composed by Chén Yìzēng 陳繹曾 (zì Bófū 伯敷, jìnshì of the early-Yuán Imperial Academy circle) in response to the Renzong-era 1313 re-establishment of the kējǔ examinations under the new Sòngrú program. The book divides into eight thematic sections setting out the methods of xíngwén 行文 (“conducting prose”) for examination candidates; in keeping with the Renzong reform — which mandated the Sòngrú commentaries on the Five Classics as the authoritative interpretation — Chén systematically defers, in matters of doctrine, to Zhū Xī 朱熹. The work is the principal extant early-Yuán evidence for how the examination essay was meant to be written in the new (and to early-Yuán contemporaries quite startling) Sòngxué style.

Catalog correction: the KR4i catalog meta dates Chén Yìzēng to the Sòng (宋). This is an error: Chén is unambiguously an early-Yuán figure, recorded under Yuánshǐ 元史 Rúxué zhuàn (附見), holder of Guózǐjiàn zhùjiào under the Yuán in the Zhìshùn era (1330–1333), pupil of Dài Biǎoyuán 戴表元 (d. 1310), and explicitly responding to the 1313 Yuán examination reform. CBDB id 439190 gives 1287–1351. The dynasty is corrected to 元 in this entry and on the 陳繹曾 person note.

Tiyao

Wén shuō. By Chén Yìzēng of the Yuán. Yìzēng’s zì was Bófū. The Yuán shǐ attaches him to the Rúxué zhuàn and gives him as a man of Chǔzhōu; the Wúxìng xùzhì also records his name. His family seat was at Kuòcāng 括蒼, but he lived at Tiáoshuǐ 苕水. In the Zhìshùn era he rose to Guózǐjiàn zhùjiào. He had studied under Dài Biǎoyuán and was a friend of Chén Lǚ — his teachers and his connections having a clear and substantial pedigree, so that his learning shows real grounding.

The book was written in response to the Yányòu 延祐 (1313) re-establishment of the examination system, as a model-method for the candidate. The book is divided into eight thematic sections discussing the methods of xíng wén. At that time the Five Classics were everywhere taught according to the commentaries of the Sòng rú; this was set as the binding regulation, and no one dared diverge. So the general thrust of this book is to defer in every matter to Zhūzǐ.

The Wúxìng xùzhì records that Yìzēng composed a Wénquán pǔ and a Kējǔ tiānjiē — to give students the direction of their craft — and that copies of them passed eagerly from hand to hand. Jiāo Hóng’s 焦竑 Jīngjí zhì further records a Gǔjīn wén jīnshì in two juǎn by him. Examining Yìzēng’s Wénquán in eight juǎn, appended with Shī xiǎo pǔ in two juǎn — printed in the Yuán by the booksellers of Máshā 麻沙 and prefaced to the Cèxué tǒngzōng 策學統宗 — there is still a transmitted copy. Its text is altogether different from the present volume. As for Kējǔ tiānjiē and Gǔjīn wén jīnshì, neither has been seen. Conceivably the present volume is one of these two; but the titles have been confounded, and no decisive identification can be made. For the moment we follow the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn’s heading of “Wén shuō” and catalog it under that title, leaving the question undecided. The book’s opening reference to a “Chén Wénjìng gōng 陳文靖公” is to Chén Yǎn 陳儼 of Dōngpíng 東平, the Yuán Hànlín xuéshì also distinguished for prose; that Yìzēng calls his own ancestor “xiān shàngshū” (the xiān shàngshū — i.e. the late Shàngshū) shows that his family had achieved high office in an earlier generation, but the lineage is no longer traceable.

Abstract

The Wén shuō is one of the most informative surviving witnesses to the early-Yuán reorganisation of the examination system and the corresponding reorganisation of prose pedagogy. After Khubilai’s hesitations, the Yuán kējǔ was finally re-established under Renzong (Aiyuruba 仁宗) in the Yányòu 1 (1313) reform: classical-doctrine examinations were now to be set on the basis of Zhū Xī’s commentaries — the Sì shū jí zhù 四書集註 for Sì shū, the standard Sòng exegeses for the Five Classics — and the prose form of the examination essay (jīngyì 經義) was to be regulated accordingly. Chén Yìzēng, in the years following the reform and well before the Yuán’s eventual collapse, set out to write a manual for candidates. The result is the Wén shuō. The book takes eight thematic headings — preserved as section headings in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recension — and runs through the techniques of writing the new-style essay, anchoring every doctrinal claim in Zhū Xī.

The single most consequential textual question concerns the book’s identity. Chén Yìzēng’s surviving Wénquán (8 juǎn, with Shī xiǎo pǔ appended), printed at Máshā in the Yuán, is a different work. The Sìkù preface lists three further titles by him — Wénquán pǔ, Kējǔ tiānjiē, Gǔjīn wén jīnshì (the last in 2 juǎn) — and the editors suggest that the present Wén shuō may be either Kējǔ tiānjiē or Gǔjīn wén jīnshì under a different name. The matter cannot be resolved.

The dating bracket adopted here — 1315 to 1333 — anchors the work between the 1313 Yányòu reform that prompted it (so it cannot pre-date 1315 in practice) and the end of the Zhìshùn era 1333, when Chén was still in office at the Imperial Academy and the Wúxìng xùzhì records the work as “already circulated and eagerly copied”. A tighter bracket would require evidence the sources do not provide.

The work was lost in independent transmission by the Míng; the Sìkù recension is the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn reconstruction and is the basis of all modern editions.

Translations and research

• Wáng Shuǐ-zhào 王水照, ed., Lì-dài wén-huà huì biān 歷代文話彙編 (Fù-dàn dà-xué, 2007) — the standard modern corpus of pre-modern Chinese prose-criticism; reprints the Wén shuō alongside Chén Yì-zēng’s Wén-quán.
• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, Zhōng-guó wén-xué pī-píng shǐ 中國文學批評史 (Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí, 1979 rev.), treats Chén Yì-zēng as a key Yuán figure in the gǔ-wén / examination-prose nexus.
• Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (UC, 2000), discusses the Renzong 1313 reform and its prose consequences (the immediate context of the Wén shuō).
• Hilde de Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127–1279) (Harvard, 2007), for the late-Sòng prehistory.

Other points of interest

The Wén shuō is a useful corrective to the popular view that the Yuán was “lost” to the kējǔ. The 1313 reform did re-establish the examinations; this book, by a holder of Guózǐjiàn zhùjiào and a pupil of Dài Biǎoyuán, is a direct response to that reform and is the principal early-Yuán witness to the new Zhū-Xī-orthodox examination prose, which would in turn become the foundation of MíngQīng bāgǔ wén 八股文.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5.
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q15915076 (文說).