“Locality” on the Borderlands

Abstract

A key characteristic of the gazetteer genre is its systematic intertextuality through citation. In this, it is a precise exemplar of Bakhtin’s secondary genres. This article examines the representation of place in the Ming borderlands through close reading of the earliest extant gazetteer of Dali Prefecture, the 1563 Dali fuzhi. Through examination of the poems, histories, and inscriptions referenced in the text, as well as the paratextual material, this article situates Li Yuanyang’s Dali fuzhi in relation to both the gazetteer genre and the literary world of sixteenth-century Yunnan. I argue that the concept of the locality realised in Dali fuzhi was as complex as its sources, creating new knowledge out of the interplay of local and imperial discourses.