摘要
This article explains both how the Classics Mat lectures became an institution with broad reach from the imperial court to the provinces and how they mediated the vernacularization of authoritative texts. It is based on linked examples extending from transcripts of Zhu Xi’s 1194 court lectures to late-Southern Song local academy lecture transcripts and a late-Yuan locally printed compendium of “discussions” on a Tang political advice text. It begins with an overview of the institutional history of the Classics Mat lectures that discusses the reconceptualization of the relationship between learning and governance, and between lecturing and current affairs. The essay’s core contribution lies in the three case studies that shed light on the ways in which the Classics Mat shaped the content, format, exegesis, and language of learning in local schools and academies and in the materials circulated and published therein. It proposes that the vernacularization of the learning reflected in academy lectures and their transcripts retained highly visible connections to authoritative literary Sinitic texts and thus forged close links between provincial literati and the court.
關鍵詞
Classics Mat 經筵, learning 學, vernacularization, lecturing, Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學), The Essentials of Governance from the Reign of Constancy Revealed (Zhenguan zhengyao 貞觀政要), Zhu Xi, Song dynasty, Yuan dynasty, academies 書院