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Abstract

Amid the politically changed literary landscape of the lat Ming dynasty, the taige school—comprising primarily of Hanlin officials and Grand Secretariat ministers—adopted a strategy of active engagement while maintaining its traditional foundations. From the early Wanli period to the Tianqi and Chongzhen riegns, the taige writers consistently asserted that literary authority should be restored to their own ranks. In response to challenges from the School of the Seven Masters (qizi pai), taige scholars developed three major competitive strategies. The first was a dialectical strategy of offense and defense, through which they defended their professional identity as court literati and upheld their aesthetic values of propriety, while criticizing the Seven Masters for their excessive imitation and limited scholarly breadth. The second was the diversified organizational strategy, which traced their lineage to historiographers of the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties and to Hanlin scholars. This strategy also emphasized the internal transmission of literary concepts and intellectual legacy, while renewing the roster of representative taige members. It aimed to attract the neutral writers to the taige community and to consolidate group and alliance identities. The third was a confrontational writing strategy, which emphasized creativity, talent, learning, and practical experience in composition. Taige writers rejected sectarian biases in favor of eclectic synthesis and pursued a calm, simple and harmonious writing style. Through these strategies, the taige school played a vital role in the literary and intellectual transformations of the late Ming dynasty.

Keywords

taiga school, School of the Seven Masters, debate strategies, organizational strategies, writing strategies

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