The Figure of Yan Zhuoju 顏涿聚 in Ancient Chinese Literature

0467742 - OÚ 2017 RIV DE eng J - Journal Article
Weingarten, Oliver
The Figure of Yan Zhuoju 顏涿聚 in Ancient Chinese Literature.
Monumenta Serica. Roč. 63, č. 2 (2015), s. 229-261. ISSN 0254-9948
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : Confucius * Confucius's Disciples * Yan Zhuoju * Anecdotes * Early Chinese History * Philology * Historiography * Rhetoric
OECD category: Specific literatures

Contributing to the surging interest in rhetorical uses of anecdotal narratives in ancient China, the present article investigates sources about a purported follower of Confucius going by the name of Yan Zhuoju, or variants thereof. The main advantage of focusing on such an obscure figure is that extant sources can be exhaustively analysed – an approach intractable for more fully documented personalities – in order to gauge the mechanisms which created the textual record historians utilise to reconstruct events of the ancient past. The article demonstrates how the same figure can be appropriated across different discourses, to wit, in attacks on Confucius's alleged improprieties; in attempts to counter such attacks; and in arguments for the increasingly meritocratic social order of the Warring States period. Rarely adding up to a complete story, such appropriations are constituted by fragmentary narratives, summary statements, and intertextual references
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0267351