In 1817 a Cantonese scholar was mocked in Beijing as surprisingly
learned for someone from the boondocks; in 1855 another Cantonese
scholar boasted of the flourishing of literati culture in his home
region. Not without reason, the second man pointed to the
Xuehaitang (Sea of Learning Hall) as the main factor in the upsurge
of learning in the Guangzhou area. Founded in the 1820s by the
eminent scholar-official Ruan Yuan, the Xuehaitang was indeed one
of the premier academies of the nineteenth century.
The celebratory discourse that portrayed the Xuehaitang as
having radically altered literati culture in Guangzhou also
legitimated the academy's place in Guangzhou and Guangzhou's place
as a cultural center in the Qing empire. This study asks: Who
constructed this discourse and why? And why did some Cantonese
elites find this discourse compelling while others did not? To
answer these questions, Steven Miles looks beyond intellectual
history to local social and cultural history. Arguing that the
academy did not exist in a scholarly vacuum, Miles contends that
its location in the city of Guangzhou and the Pearl River Delta
embedded it in social settings and networks that determined who
utilized its resources and who celebrated its successes and
values.
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