Wáng Yuánjié 王元杰, zì Zǐyīng 子英, was a Yuán-period scholar of Wújiāng 吳江 (in present-day Sūzhōu, Jiāngsū). According to the Sìkù tíyào of his Chūnqiū yàn yì 春秋讞義 (KR1e0063), he was recommended for office in the Zhìzhèng era (1341–1370) but, with military disturbances spreading across the empire, did not enter government service; he taught privately in his native district. The original preface by Gān Wénchuán 干文傳 (zì Shòudào 壽道) of Wújùn 吳郡 — a retired Lǐbù shàngshū 禮部尚書 (Minister of Rites) at the Jiāyì dàfū 嘉議大夫 grade — is dated Zhìzhèng 10 / 5th month, xiàhuàn (mid-summer 1350); Wáng’s own preface to the work states that it took nearly twenty years to compile. CBDB does not at present have a confident match for him; his lifedates can be estimated only approximately as fl. ca. 1330–1360.
His scholarly programme was to recover, for the Chūnqiū, what the ChéngZhū tradition had left unsystematized. Programme Chéng Yí 程頤 had begun a Chūnqiū commentary but did not complete it; Zhū Xī 朱熹 left no specialized Chūnqiū monograph. Wáng accordingly assembled the dispersed Chūnqiū-related remarks of the two masters from their yǔlù, letters, and other classical commentaries, distributed them under the relevant classic-text passages, then added Hú Ānguó’s 胡安國 Chūnqiūzhuàn (KR1e0036) — placing Hú’s older material after Zhū Xī’s, in deference to the latter — and finally appended his own dialectic conclusion under each entry, marked yàn 讞 (literally “verdict, sentence”). The work bears the marks of a strict ChéngZhū literalism: as the Sìkù editors note, the work is so devoted to Zhū Xī that it does not allow itself a single departure from him.
The Chūnqiū yàn yì is his only surviving work; its reception was modest but durable. The Qiánlóng emperor’s own Yùzhì tí Wáng Yuánjié Chūnqiū yàn yì 御製題王元杰春秋讞義 prefaces the SKQS edition with a sharp criticism — that Wáng’s title duplicates Yè Mèngdé’s 葉夢得 Chūnqiū yàn (KR1e0034) without acknowledgment, and that his deference to Zhū Xī amounts to zhòngtái 重儓 (“a slave of slaves”). The Sìkù editors’ notice softens this judgment, observing that, although shallow in penetration, his learning is “deep and steady, distinctly better than the unsupervised babble of the Míng Confucians.”