The Consolidation and Transmutation of the Zhenguan-era (627–649) Court Ideology of Wen 文 (Cultural Forms)

Abstract:This essay argues that many of the compilational projects and scholarly works produced by the court of Tang Emperor Taizong 太宗 (r. 626–649) advance a coherent and novel set of claims about his person and his salvific participation in the realm of cultural forms (wen 文). These projects intervene in several previously disconnected sixth-century debates and suggest that their proper solutions are all related to one common narrative of the development, more-recent decline, and nascent reinvigoration of Chinese civilization. Although records of the contemporary reception of this narrative outside of the court do not survive, in the decades after Taizong's death it would be echoed, repurposed, and partially inverted by literati arguing the importance and authority of their own interventions in wen. These echoes of Taizong's court projects in literati work show that they had to some degree succeeded in unifying what had recently been a more-fragmented intellectual world.