Networks, communities, and identities

This thesis examines two discourses prevalent among literati in the Yuan dynasty: local tradition and dynastic tradition. Rather than focusing on the traditions themselves, it discusses the way Yuan literati employed these two concepts as frameworks of perception in their mutual definition and identity formation. This thesis thus investigates historical developments in the Yuan from the unique perspective of literati communication, demonstrating how Yuan literati, aside from being a social stratum, were organizing and integrating themselves into a cultural community. Chapter one is a case study of the construction and employment of local traditions in Yuan dynasty Wuzhou prefecture. Identifying this phenomenon as a mode of discourse with standardized formal and functional attributes, this chapter traces the cultural forms it adopted and explains the cultural significance of "the local" to Yuan dynasty intellectuals. Chapter two shows that "local tradition" was a southern mode of discourse, and that the core concern of "local traditions" in the north was in fact the national "civil order" of the Yuan dynasty. This distinction thus brings cultural discrepancies between south and north to our attention. Chapter three explores the dominant discourse found in the north, the dynastic tradition, and its subsequent prevalence in the south. It reveals the ways in which Yuan literati constructed their dynastic identity, the changing orientation of Yuan literati from politics to culture, and the political background to both discourses. Chapter four analyzes the genre of the "preface" ( xu ) as a social practice, the medium through which local and dynastic discourses were able to gain wide circulation. The preface embodies a structure of social interaction, the means by which literati established social networks and cultural bonds, and as a result the preface was a significant factor in the formation of the literati community. The conclusion describes how the discourses of dynastic and local traditions, as important modes of literati communication, constituted actual and imagined social and cultural structural networks among literati, and how these two modes represent the cultural response of Yuan literati to their historical circumstances.