HIS280Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Wang Yangming, Feng Menglong, Tang Xianzu
Document Summary
Lecture 4: ming materiality & religion, print revolution. Not just print of confucian classicsalso joke books, fiction books, touristic handbooks! A lot of publishing houses of late ming were in lower yangzi delta region. Shows impact of money economy on thought (i. e. buddhist merit" books. You get good karma for printing more books, so you print a bunch) I. e. the short story monkey we readan allegorical satire from 1490. Was trying to bring grassroots culture up to the elite, because the ordinary folks had more child-like/genuine work. Wang yangming (1472-1529) versus older song neo-confucianism (song only talked about the internal civil examination versus wang yangming talked about innate goodness + introspection) Li zhi wrote books denouncing song neo-confucianism, claiming it was hypocritical re being so gung-ho about civil exams. He goes to prison in 1602 for his anti-confucian philosophy; he kills himself, there. He said instead we should go back to our child-mind.
