The Moral Mind’s Outrage in Zhang Nai’s “Must-Read Classical Literature” 必讀古文

This paper examines an anthology published by scholar-official Zhang Nai (courtesy name Dongchu, _jinshi_ 1604), entitled _Major and Minor Works of Must-Read Classical Literature, Annotated, Selected, and Interpreted by Academician Zhang Dongchu_ 張侗初太史評選句解必讀古文綱目 (1626–27). Zhang Nai seldom appears in present-day scholarship, but he was a prominent official and educator in his day, and his anthology was widely familiar among literati throughout the seventeenth century. Among the many late-Ming officials dismissed from office due to the machinations of the powerful court eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627), Zhang and his elite collaborators produced annotated anthologies of examination writing, Confucian exegesis, and classical prose and poetry. He also collaborated with Xu Guangqi (1562–1633, _jinshi_ 1604) and the Italian Jesuit Sabatino de Ursis (1575–1620) on the technical manual _Western Hydraulics_. Through such projects, Zhang Nai was immersed in late-Ming print culture.

Drawing on his publishing expertise, Zhang’s multigenre compendium of classical writings deploys the formal affordances of late-Ming anthologies to identify itself with—and creatively intervene in—a longstanding Confucian discourse on the relationship between writing and the Way. According to Zhou Dunyi’s (1017–1073) famous pronouncement, “writing is that which conveys the Way.” Yet, as Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) discourses on writing repeatedly assert, writing is also at risk of giving way to talent (_cai_), a personal quality which may serve the Way or work against it by inclining toward personal desires. From this standpoint, writing is a site of contest between the Confucian moral mind and the human mind’s baser proclivities.

 Zhang’s anthology enacts a hierarchical logic that aligns with these entrenched Confucian concerns. The “Major and Minor” writings announced in the anthology’s title are organized into four clearly ranked categories prominently advertised on the anthology’s title page as morality, statecraft, expression, and talent—in that order. The work’s reading guidelines identify the two upper categories as “guiding principles” and the two lower categories as “minor items.” In a preface, Zhang’s collaborator Li Yuanzhen (fl. 1620s) elaborates on the reasoning behind these organizational principles:

“[_Must-Read Works of Classical Literature_] takes the establishment of moral standards for its first body of selections. From ancient times to the present, only moral integrity and righteous behavior have been of primary importance—we do not merely take writing as intrinsically superior. [The compendium] takes administering the kingdom and enriching its people [as the subject] for its second body of selections. [These works] pursue what is of substance and set no store by empty words. As for [works by] exceptional individuals who disport themselves according to personal temperament, emulating the mechanisms of creation, and setting their brushtips to lofty aims, this is [a matter of] understanding one’s natural endowment. These are thus incorporated into the third body of selections. As for deliberately ornate writings of trifling skill, [those which] obtain transient success, even if they are made known for a thousand years, these are but excesses of carefully plotted writing! They are therefore selected for the fourth category.”

By elevating moral standards and statecraft over displays of personal temperament and talented wordcraft, Zhang’s anthology insistently identifies itself as a firmly Confucian collection of writings. Yet these elaborate editorial trappings belie a significant—and subversive—intervention which plays out in the anthology’s contents.

Zhang Nai’s anthology dextrously conflates the Confucian morality espoused in its paratextual materials with an aesthetically esteemed tradition of writings motivated by enmity (_yuan_) or indignation (_fen_). This is becomes apparent upon examination of the compendium’s contents. The uppermost rank, which contains 27 pieces, is replete with the works of impassioned political martyrs. This section begins with a piece (and contains four more) attributed to Qu Yuan; includes the Southern Song patriots Wen Tianxiang (1236–1283) and Xie Fangde (1226–1289), both of whom died in support of the Song when it was overtaken by the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1279–1368); and, as a concluding piece, features the famous “Letter in Reply to Su Wu” attributed to the disgraced general Li Ling. The second category commences with Han Yu’s (768–824) famous “Farewell to Meng Dongye” which describes strong, destabilizing feelings as the impetus for writing and throughout the late imperial period was often associated with this aesthetically valued tradition of negative affect.

Such contents are subversive in that they run counter to famous Confucian pronouncements on writing and the Way. Zhu Xi esteemed Qu Yuan’s writing for its expressive impact, but observes that Qu’s writing “tended toward the unrestrained and demonic, and his enmity and resentment were aroused to such a degree that [his writings] cannot be used as standards.” And in _Instructions for Practical Living_, Wang Yangming (1472–1529) dismisses Han Yu as merely “a giant among writers” before launching into an extended tirade against writings that do not transmit the Way. By presenting as models exactly those writers whom Confucian progenitors had identified as problematic, and doing so in Confucian terms, I propose that Zhang Nai and his associates aimed to synthesize an aesthetic tradition with Confucian standards in order to propose that the moral mind could contain outrage without giving way to selfish desire. Given Zhang Nai’s political context, it is not hard to see why he would have deemed this intervention necessary.

This paper also considers the broader intellectual context that allowed for Zhang Nai’s intervention. An associate of the poetic luminary Yuan Hongdao, Zhang was a posthumous admirer of the incendiary late-Ming thinker Li Zhi. Li Zhi famously advocated for a highly individualized, often indignant, childlike mind which he articulated in relation to the same aesthetic tradition of indignation at play in Zhang Nai’s anthology. In many respects, Li Zhi’s childlike mind offered a significant departure from the moral mind, and his discourses on this theme do not suggest that he aimed to integrate the two. This underscores the creative nature of Zhang Nai’s anthology, which combines a distinctly literary repertoire with the resources of Confucian thought.