Information, Medium & Society: Eighteenth International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

The term “Civil Service Examination” (CSE) usually conjures images of backwardness and repression. Consequently, the Four Books, the kernel of CSE, are widely accepted as the emblem of a repressive power imposed on the examinees and even all the literati. But the mono-directional understanding of the power being repressive oversimplified its complexity. This article uses Joke texts as a key to unfold the multi-tensions between the Four Books and the literati class. Through examining the popular Four Books-based Jokes in Late Ming, the essay reveals how the Foucauldian concepts of power-knowledge, productive power, and discourse exert impact, via popular texts, on the contemporary society. Late Ming witnessed a boom of commercial publishing, during which jokebooks with various themes flourished. One remarkable result was the Four Book-based jokebooks. Though parodies and deliberate misinterpretations of the Four Books were not uncommon, previous compilers bracketed them with other funny anecdotes. Late Ming publishers, for the first time, collected the Four Book-based jokes to form subchapters and even monographs. Since the Four Book-based joke in Late Ming paid an extra attention to commoners rather than elites, it could tell a bottom-up story about how these Confucian classics interacted with contemporary people.