Picturing the Confucian Sage: The Illustrated record of Master Wang Yangming and Late Ming Print Culture

Abstract

Abstract Late imperial China saw the development of print culture, in which one of the practices was combining the illustration and texts, thus visualizing the contents and changing readers’ reading experience. This paper explores an illustrated account of the famous Confucian Wang Yangming (1472–1529) entitled The Illustrated record of Master Wang Yangming (Wang Yangming xiansheng tupu) by Zou Shouyi (1491–1562). By tracing the earlier pictorial Confucian hagiographical tradition and the practices of book publishing, this paper examines the cult of Wang Yangming as revealed in this book along with other deifications of him at that time. I argue that such deifications in narrative texts and illustrations not only helped Wang reach a larger audience but also shifted people’s mentality of reverence by enlarging the space of worship from portraits to books. Such an analysis will enhance our understanding of the nuances of the Confucian hagiographical tradition in late imperial China.