Popularizing the Sage: Wang Yangming and Vernacular Confucian Hagiographies in Late Imperial China

Abstract

This dissertation offers a new account of the reception history of the influential and iconoclastic Neo-Confucian figure Wang Yangming (1472–1529) in early modern China. As the most important figure of the “School of Mind” (xinxue) during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wang is often thought of as a “secular” thinker of the elite, in contrast with popular “religious” figures from Buddhist and Daoist traditions. However, as I suggest, he in fact occupied both the secular and religious spheres. As a result of the development of print culture and different religious traditions in the late Ming, popular biographical texts featuring him took on various forms, which includes vernacular stories, illustrated manuals, lineage records, chronicles, plays, and recorded sayings. I characterize these biographical writings as “vernacular Confucian hagiographies.” The term “hagiography” brings to the fore the religious dynamics underlying these seemingly secular Confucian cultural products, while “vernacular” points to the wider accessibility of these texts. Juxtaposing these different textual genres with visual representations of Wang, I argue that these hagiographies performed the function of popularizing and elevating Wang as a Confucian sage admired and idolized by people of different social strata, thus reshaping the history of Confucianism and popular literature in late imperial China. The chapters of this dissertation are arranged chronologically and by genre, from chronicle, illustrated biography, plays, and lineage records, to vernacular story, all of which are biographical narratives of Wang’s life events and teachings. They follow similar trajectories of Wang’s life events but are unique in their own generic expressions. This interdisciplinary study of “vernacular Confucian hagiographies” breaks down the traditional barriers between “historical,” “religious,” and “literary” sources and juxtaposes them as part of a larger phenomenon in the late Ming cultural milieu. Instead of treating Wang as a Neo-Confucian philosopher, as he has been in previous studies, this new account of his early reception history underscores Wang’s role as a cultural and religious icon. I also treat his hagiographies as a form of public discourse in which both the literati and the masses expressed their political or religious views and articulated their self-identities. By bringing into dialogue scholarship on book history and religious studies, this dissertation identifies three functions that “vernacular Confucian hagiographies” served: Firstly, “vernacular Confucian hagiographies” proselytized Confucian figures such as Wang through print and other media in similar ways to more familiar hagiographies of popular Buddhist and Daoist figures. Secondly, their existence reflected the increasing interactions between “elite” and “popular” literature and between the “Three Teachings” (Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism) in early modern China. Thirdly, it is an indispensable aspect of the booming print culture of the late Ming, when these various genres were tailored to readers’ reading experiences. In summary, “vernacular Confucian hagiographies” opens up a precious window into the interplay between intellectual history, religion, print culture, and popular literature in the late Ming cultural milieu.