A Study into the Incident of the Hongdumen Academy

Abstract

In the late E. Han, Emperor Ling founded the Hongdumen Academy so that political favors were bestowed upon the literati to reshape the policy of personnel placement, which aroused violent remonstrations lodged by the ministers. And this became a significant event in the contemporary politics and in the literary history of the late E. Han as well. Scholars through the ages have dealt with the contentious issue, but the realm does not abound with in-depth and profound research studies. Beginning with the viewing angle of the complicated relationship between Confucianism and literature, where the background to the establishment of the Academy is painted in a great variety of academicism; this article analyzes the normal practice of the Han System of the Personnel Recommendation with a view to pinpointing the underlying cause of the Incident of the Hongdumen Academy. The cause is that the Han System of the Personnel Recommendation was bucked, which was grounded upon the Confucian moral integrity as the content, and upon xiangju lixuan as the norm. This article states that the Incident was, in relation with the danggu zhihuo, interconnected with the political structure based upon such social strata as shizu and shuzu, which had gradually been created since the E. Han. By means of the investigation and debate on the Incident, this article is written to demonstrate the relationship between literature and Confucianism of the Han dynasty, the literary conditions under development, and the complex political and ideological background against which the literary conditions existed by the end of the E. Han.