The Position of JIN Lü-Xiang’s Lian Luo Feng Ya on the Anthology of Neo-Confucianists of the Song Dynasty
금이상『렴낙풍아』재송유선본상적정위
LÜ Zu-Qian, ZHEN De-Xiu, and JIN Lü-Xiang are all renowned Neo-Confucianists during the Song Dynasty. Their viewpoint on literature was built on Confucianism’s Tao and they considered sentences from Liu Jing canon for their sentence structuring. Yet there are differences in compilations they made regarding selection of literatures and writers based on their selection criteria.
LÜ Zu-Qian’s Song Wen Jian contained various works and writing styles, adhering to the emperor’s order to select sentences that would do good for politics. However, his compilation is criticized for lack of coherence. His another compilation Gu Wen Guan Jian mainly consists of sentences of archaic prose writers, holding true to its purpose of guide to sentence structuring. Taken together, overarching characteristics of LÜ’s compilations are purpose of guide to sentence building.
ZHEN De-Xiu viewed sentence as part of academic pursuit, and argued that literature should identify sages’ findings and teachings. And it should be practically useful for the country, not merely a talk for talking’s sake. Holding true to such belief, ZHEN compiled Wen Zhang Zheng Zong by dividing the compilation into four sections: CiMing (purpose), YiLun (exchange of opinion), XuShi (launch work) and ShiFu (verse and prose) in a bid to teach readers for what the right kind of literature works is. This book, albeit stronger philosophical thought of Neo-Confucianism of the Song Dynasty compared to LÜ’s compilations, is mainly intended as a guide to creation of literature.
JIN Lü-Xiang’s Lian Luo Feng Ya, the first compilation of poems written by Neo-Confucianists of the Song Dynasty contains the Lian Luo School’s poems and proses to identify the school’s origin and scholastic mantles. JIN put his painting Lian Luo Feng Ya Tu on the first page to demonstrate his academic tradition as a successor of Zhu Xi, and arranged literature works in the order of this. It has an implication as the first compilation of the Song's Neo-Confucianists’ poems that abstracted poems created by figures of the Lian Luo School and reestablished line of the Lian Luo School, a big move from traditional framework of compilation for traditional literatures.
呂祖謙、眞德秀、金履祥皆身為理學家,本乎儒道,文章宗經。但依其編選宗旨及其編選標 準不同,其被選的作品作家自異。呂祖謙奉聖旨編選的『宋文鑒』專取有益治道者,收作品以及文 體可謂賅備。『古文關鍵』是為文而作,博取古文家之文。眞德秀『文章正宗』具有較農的理學色 彩,雖分“辭命”、“議論”、“敘事”、“詩賦”四科,欲明學者識文辭源流之正,但不免為文 辭而作之嫌。金履祥『濂洛風雅』依風雅正變,首次專取共同宗祖的“濂洛”學派的文章,欲譜婺 學。因此,金履祥以卷首專設“濂洛風雅圖”來彰顯其學統,排列作品順序亦是。故至金履祥『濂 洛風雅』始脫于文學性的選本,其意義在於首次匯集濂洛學派之詩文作品來重新樹立學統。