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94 Chapter  Later Narrative Illustration Outside the Court Persuasion, Pleasure, Prestige, and Piety 4 or a variety of reasons, narrative illustrations on Confucian themes became exceptionally widespread and popular during the last century of the Ming dynasty. Social and economic forces supported a thriving consumer culture and encouraged an upsurge in storytelling genres, in which scholars were deeply involved.1 The sixteenth century saw the maturation of a commercialized economy and a new concentration of population in urban centers, as well as increased rates of literacy and a surge of activity in the printing industry. At the same time, strict examination quotas prevented many educated men from pursuing careers as governmental officials. Even those who succeeded in the exams and gained positions in the bureaucracy might be discouraged by career demands and factional conflicts . Such conditions led many literati, officeholding or not, to devote their energy to pursuits other than administration. Some composed various kinds of informal histories, vernacular tales, short stories, novels, operas, and dramas. Live performances as well as durable material forms circulated their stories to a growing public. At the same time, Taizhou school followers of the philosopherstatesman Wang Yangming were promoting their belief in an innate moral nature that ordinary people, not just the elite, could cultivate.2Somescholar-officialssponsoredinstructivestoriesand pictures intended for broad segments of the populace, evoking the Ming founding emperor’s efforts to encourage morality.3 For example, the censor Zhong Huamin (1537–1597; js 1580) created The Sacred Edict, Illustrated and Explained (Shengyu tujie), which provided vernacular interpretations and generic illustrations for of Ming Taizu’s Six Injunctions (Liu yu).4 In 1587 he had the work carved onto a large stone tablet, from which rubbings were to be distributed to all provinces, counties, and districts.5 For women specifically, Lü Kun (1536–1618; js 1574) published Instructions for the Women’s Quarters, Illustrated and Discussed (Guifan tushuo) in 1590, reworking the stories in Liu Xiang’s Biographies of Exemplary Women into a form more readily understood and enjoyed by Ming audiences.6 It proved to be very popular and went through multiple editions.7 Innumerable illustrated versions of Twentyfour Exemplars of Filial Piety (Ershisi xiao) circulated as woodblock -printed books and painted albums, widely disseminating Guo Jujing’s (fl. c.1295–1321) redaction of the traditional tales as instructive anecdotes for commoners and particularly appropriate for children.8 In addition to such didactic illustrations created expressly for ordinary people, instructive pictures originally made for the court also came into wider circulation in the late Ming period. The publication of The Emperor’s Mirror, Illustrated and Discussed and Cultivating Rectitude, Illustrated and Explained as woodblock-printed books brought to officials and commoners compilations initially intended for a young emperor and prince, respectively (see Chapter 6). As detailed below, successive editions of both works were published in a variety of contexts, and subtle modifications in format and framing texts tailored the editions to their target audiences. In evaluating these variations I have found much utility in Gérard Genette’s analytical discussion of paratext, which encompasses a variety of features that mediate between a book and its public and serve to introduce the work to readers.9 Another compendium of moralistic pictures, the illustrated life of Confucius, also evolved a variety of forms as it circulated to successive users. Unlike the two anthologies, however, the pictorial biography was originally addressed to mature officials, not to youthful members of the royal family. Moreover, its movement from one context to another entailed changes in its core content, Narrative Illustration Outside the Court | 95 in addition to paratextual repackaging. Variously taking the form of paintings, woodblock-printed books, and carved stone tablets, the life of Confucius came to serve more diverse functions than did the later editions of The Emperor’s Mirror and Cultivating Rectitude. Some of the same narrative themes that were popular in illustrated books were also treated in painting. The choice of medium itself may indicate a work’s intended audience and functions. Painting carried greater social prestige than woodblock printing , which was a lowly and anonymous craft tradition until the mid-sixteenth century. Printing technology had been invented to produce multiple copies of religious texts and images, so that believers could accumulate religious merit more rapidly. There were no histories of the medium, nor any important discourses on its origins and principles. Woodblock printing provided reproductions , and many examples of the same work could exist. Although late Ming collectors valued Song printed editions...

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