”The Transition from Dao Learning to Literary Learning"

Literary hermeneutics is one of the topical issues among current Chinese literature scholars in China. This talk will introduce that literary hermeneutics can be an alternative perspective on the relationship between Confucian canons and literary composition. “Transition from Dao learning to literary learning” is an observed result from this perspective, which initially involves that Neo-Confucian scholars turned their interest in literary composition under Mongol rule. Because of the increasingly competitive civil service examinations and limited official positions, Confucian elites had to focus on prose writing, give up the paths to officialdom or devote themselves to other fields, such as poetry. This phenomenon started in the late southern Song and became obvious in Yuan-Ming China, together with the inheritance and spread of Neo-Confucianism. With the decline of state power in the middle Ming, literary learning became one significant intellectual resource for Confucian elites to challenge or revise the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy. This also paved the way for the boom of literary composition in the late Ming.
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Ting Cheng is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University. His interests include hermeneutics, ancient Chinese poetics, intellectual history and new cultural history in ancient China. His research primarily revolves around the construction of literary hermeneutics through ancient Chinese thought.