Between the sixth and twentieth centuries, the civil service examinations created and maintained political coherence across the Chinese polity. Preparation for the examinations transformed the lives of literate elites by defining educational standards and disseminating a language that determined elite status. However, as participation in the examinations became central to that status, an intense competition to determine the educational curriculum and the subject matter of the examinations erupted between intellectual and political rivals. The principal goal of this book is to explain the restructuring of the examination field during a critical point in its history, the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), which witnessed the increasing domination of the examinations by the Neo-Confucian Learning of the Way movement.

By analyzing textbooks, examination questions and essays, and official and private commentary, Hilde De Weerdt examines how occupational, political, and intellectual groups shaped curricular standards and examination criteria and how examination standards in turn shaped political and intellectual agendas. These questions reframe the debate about the civil service examinations and their place in the imperial order.

Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 Tables and Figures 000
 Chronology 000
 Abbreviations 000
 Introduction 1
 The Civil Service Examinations:
Continuity and Change?2
 From Northern Song to Southern Song?6
 The Examination Field?11
 Part I: Prolegomena
1 Intellectual Traditions and Teachers 25
 The Learning of the Way?25
 From Yongjia to "Yongjia" ?46
 Scholarship and Movement?53
2 Examination Expositions and Policy
 Response Essays
 in Literati Culture 55
 Exegesis and Examination Writing?59
 Government and Examination Writing?78
 Part II: The "Yongjia" Teachers
 in the Examination Field
3 The "Yongjia" Teachers' Standards for
 Examination Success
 (ca. 1150-ca. 1200) 89
 Standards for Policy Response Essays?90
 Standards for Expositions?111
4 Preparing for the Examinations (ca.
 1150-ca. 1200):
 The "Yongjia" Curriculum 109
 History and Administrative
Reasoning?130
 Reading and Writing?151
 Part III: The Court in the
 Examination Field
5 Court Politics and Examination Standards
(1127-1274) 173
 The Policy of "Great Impartiality"?174
 Prohibitive Interventions in the
Twelfth Century ?213
 The Ban on "False Learning" and the
Politics of Anthologizing?202
 Changing Standards in the Thirteenth
Century?213
 Part IV: The Learning of the Way Movement
 in the Examination Field
6 Preparing for the Examinations (ca.
 1150-1274):
 Developing the Learning of the Way
 Curriculum 229
 Zhu Xi's Critique of Examination Prep
 aration and the
 "Yongjia" Curriculum?231
 Moral Philosophy: Chen Chun's Examina
 tion Guide for
 Learning of the Way Believers?251
 History and Government: Ideological R
 econciliation in
 Commercial Encyclopedias?270
 Reading and Writing: The Syncretizati
 on of Canons?297
7 The Learning of the Way Transformation
 of Examination
 Standards (ca. 1200-1274) 322
 Standards for Expositions?323
 Standards for Policy Response
Essays?345
 The Learning of the Way as Official
Ideology?365
 Conclusion 375
 From Northern Song to Southern Song,
Revisited?375
 Intellectual History and the
Examination Field?381
 Appendixes
A Notes on Primary Sources 391
B Tables 408
 Reference Matter
 Works Consulted 431
 Index 479