Childhood Memories Of The Confucian Scholars In The Middle And Late Ming Dynasty(1500-1644)

As the elite class with knowledge of state craft,the Confucian scholars of the Middle and Late Ming Dynasty had significant impact on the political and cultural trends of their times.By examination of their family origins,upbringing,education and the situation of their times,we can get to know the diversification of the personalities of these scholars and the reflection of Confucian culture the childhood experiences.The self-identity of the Confucian scholar also influenced their perception and recollections of their childhood experiences,making them appear to be closely related to the Confucian identity.In addition to preface and conclusion,this paper is divided into three chapters.The preface briefly introduces the subject of the thesis,the current state of research,the literature system used and the structure of the text.The first chapter examines the family environment in the childhood memories of the concerned scholars,and analyzes the influence of family encounters on their development of personalities,emotional dispositions and ethical consciousness from three perspectives,namely,family economic situation,parenting,and brother-sister relations.In the cases covered in this paper,it appears that children of poor families who aspired to study were more active in establishing themselves and pursuing knowledge,while those from wealthy families were often taught to abstain from pride and luxury.Those who had a difficult childhood had strong memories of the death and survival of their parents,the changes happened to their caregivers,and the stories of the people who had raised and cared for them during their childhood.In their works,the concerned scholars often describe courteous scenes among the childhood brothers.Meanwhile,there are also accounts of conflicts between brothers over property or status of their biological mothers.The second chapter examines the remembered childhood words and deeds,as well as the teachings they received.Through an analysis of the conversations of the childhood scholars with their elders,it explores how the scholars perceived in their memories the expectations and teachings of their elders during their childhood and the impacts they had on them.The elders involved in this text commonly expected their children to become Confucians and used such an expectation to be a yardstick to judge the potential of their children.This kind of judgments and expectations had important influence on the social and cultural perceptions of the children.In addition,the memories of the scholars also contain records of children’s personalities and hobbies,which are quite helpful in understanding their life trajectories.The third chapter examines the childhood encounters of the concerned scholars within the context of the Middle and Late Ming period and explores the impact of the specific social environment on them.The younger children’s memories of their childhood displacements were mostly shaped by their parents’ narratives and were less emotional.Older children who experienced famine and war tended to sense family responsibility in their early ages.Appreciation,assistance,and the silent influence of values from father’s friends and teachers are significant in shaping children’s self-consciousness.The few cases of confrontation with patriarchal values in adulthood,on the other hand,reflect the complexity of the formation of personality and values among the Confucian scholars of the Middle and Late Ming Dynasty.The conclusion summarizes the trajectory of formation of the Middle and Late Ming Confucian scholars in terms of ethical and values in the context of their childhood family life conditions,personal words and deeds,and teachings they received,as well as the external circumstances of their families and their interactions.On the whole,the childhood stories recorded in the scholar’s anthology are filtered through the culture and values of the Confucian scholar class.Therefore,the accounts are mostly counter-temporal projections of the ideas of the scholar after reconstruction.Children with different childhood experiences gradually developed different personalities.From which,the spiritual world and cultural modes of the Middle and Late Ming Dynasty Confucian scholars can be better understood.