Title

Writing Funerary Inscriptions with a Historian’s Consciousness: On the Conflict between Lü and Fan as Narrated in Ouyang Xiu’s “Tomb Inscription for Fan Zhongyan”

Author

Lee, Chen-huei

Genre

Article  

Pages

559-596

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese  

Key words

guwen, narrative, Ouyang Xiu, Fan Zhongyan, funerary inscriptions

Abstract

      In this article, the phrase “historian’s consciousness” denotes an awareness that impelled authors to overcome personal affections and consider people and events objectively, in terms of their larger socio-political significance. On the basis of this consciousness, as well as his own complicated political experiences, Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 established a new model for composing funerary inscriptions, which combined both literary and historical expository techniques. This article demonstrates Ouyang’s contribution to the funerary inscription genre through an analysis of his “Tomb Inscription for Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹,” focusing on the conflict between Fan Zhongyan and Lü Yijian 呂夷簡narrated in the text. My analysis centers on Ouyang’s use of two key terms. The first is dajie 大節, a Confucian ethical concept that became the main criterion used to distinguish good and evil in Ouyang’s tomb inscriptions, especially those on individuals involved in factional conflicts. The second term is hujian 互見, which demanded that the author broadly review contemporary, and usually contradictory, data in order to decide the content and interpretive direction of the funerary inscription. Ouyang’s take on these two terms inspired literati of the late Northern Song, who were deeply trapped by the factional conflicts of their time, and his views went on to play an influential role in the development of Song prose across several genres and fields.