宿業流傳：晚明制藝文化與時文序的文類膨脹

A Dedicated Cause Endures Through the Ages: The Literary Culture of the Eight-Legged Essay During the Late Ming Period and the Genre Proliferation of Prefaces to Collections of Eight-Legged Essays

Abstract

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.

明代萬曆朝以降，圍繞八股文之寫作、編輯、出版、批評等文學活動及結社、應酬等士人行爲共同構築而風行一時的“制藝文化”，成爲一股塑造晚明文學與士人思想生活的重要力量。與時文選集、編刊相伴而生的“時文序”，既是古代文體學因應這一文化現象所作出的反应，也是晚明文學景觀中的獨特風貌。隨着“序制舉業”這一文人行爲的流行，時文序不僅作爲序之一體進入文人别集、文章總集的編輯序列中，更藉助晚明時文名家的效應不斷擴大影響。刻文撰序的普遍化又催生出自編時文集、自題時文序等現象，也促使時文序顯示出“自表生平”的叙事功能，而成爲晚明士人回憶和記録科舉生涯的文本載體。這些因素共同推動了時文序自晚明以降的文類膨脹，最終引發清人對於時文序入集之合理性的反思。

From the Wanli period onward in the Ming Dynasty, the “literary culture of the Eight-Legged Essay” that coalesced around the composition, compilation, publication, and criticism of the Eight-Legged Essay alongside scholarly social rituals such as literary coteries and ceremonial networking, emerged as a significant force shaping both the literary landscape and the intellectual ethos of literati in the late Ming. The prefatory texts accompanying the editorial compilation and publication of anthologies of Eight-Legged Essays not only embody the adaptive responses of traditional Chinese genre theory to literary cultural dynamics, but also emerged as a distinctive hallmark within the late Ming literary landscape. As the practice of writing prefaces for collections of examination essays became more prevalent, these prefaces not only evolved into a formal category systematically incorporated into the editorial frameworks of individual anthologies and comprehensive compendiums, but also extended their cultural influence through the prestige of renowned masters of Eight-Legged Essay during the late Ming era. The widespread practice of publication and preface composition gave rise to self-compiled anthologies and self-authored collections of prefaces. This development endowed the prefaces to the Collection of Eight-Legged Essays with a narrative function of “self-narrativization of life trajectories,” thereby transforming them into textual repositories through which scholar-officials memorialized and documented their imperial examination careers. These factors collectively propelled the generic proliferation of prefaces to Eight-Legged Essay anthologies from the late Ming onward, ultimately provoking Qing literati to critically interrogate the legitimacy of incorporating such prefaces into literary collections.