0572968 - OÚ 2024 eng A - Abstract
Hrubý, Jakub
Lu Ji’s disputing the fall of Wu. Between apologia of a vanquished state and family remembrance.
[AAS-in-Asia Conference /8./. Daegu, 24.06.2023-27.06.2023]
Method of presentation: Přednáška
Event organizer: Association for Asian Studies a Khyungpook National University, Daegu
URL events: https://aasinasia.org/welcome 
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : early medieval china * Lu Ji * Bian wang lun * Jin dynasty * Wu state * elites * family remembrance
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

In 280, Western Jin forces stormed Jianye and brought to the end the Wu Kingdom, the first independent southern dynasty. With the fall of Wu, the local southern elite lost the focal point of their existence. While Jin Emperor Wudi deliberately introduced a policy of appeasement of the South and made a great effort to elicit the services of locally important families, trying to integrate them into the wider elite of the Jin realm, the Jin courtiers were less eager to accommodate the “remains of the vanquished state” and exhibited a marked tendency to look down on them. Lu Ji 陆机 (261-303), a famous poet and men of letters hailed from such a family related to the imperial house of Sun. Suffering from contempt of the Jin courtiers, he had authored two pieces called Disputing the Fall of Wu (Bianwang lun 辯亡論), in which he remembered with nostalgy and pride the achievements of his ancestors. Setting these two works into historical context, the paper aims at looking into the ways Lu Ji disputes the causes of the fall of Wu and through family memory challenges in unequivocal terms the superiority of the North and qualities of its elites.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0347379