The Moral Mind’s Outrage in Zhang Nai’s “Must-Read Classical Literature” 必讀古文

In 1626–27, in the wake of court eunuch Wei Zhongxian’s (1568–1627) persecutions, scholar-official Zhang Nai (_jinshi_ 1604) published a multigenre anthology of writings elucidating the relationship between writing and morality. Confucian thinkers had long regarded the former half of this dyad warily, as that which conveyed sagely morality yet risked giving way to personal interest. In this context, writing was a site of contest between the moral mind embodying the Way and the human mind’s inclination to exceed the square and compass of sagely teachings. I show how Zhang Nai and his collaborators engaged the anthology’s formal features to synthesize an aesthetically esteemed tradition of enmity and indignation (_yuan_, _fen_) with sagely teachings traditionally resistant to these extreme affects. In doing so, they redrew the moral mind’s boundaries to incorporate writing’s expressive affordances into Confucian moral discourse, allowing space for the moral mind’s outrage in late-Ming political life.