The birth of the glorious Ming books, knowledge production and the formation of dynastic consciousness in the record of heroes and martyrs

By examining the intertwined relationship between Chen Jian’s (1497-1567) Huang Ming tongji ????(Comprehensive Annals of Imperial Ming) and the anonymous historical novel Yinglie zhuan ???(The Record of Heroes and Martyrs), this paper demonstrates that these two works together play a significant role in disseminating knowledge about the founding of the Ming dynasty from mid-sixteenth century onward. It first inspects how these two works and their later editions borrow from each other. Then, by paying special attention to the book forms of The Record of Heroes and Martyrs, including the illustrations, table formats, and special marks that serve as reading aids for the reader, this paper analyzes how these special designs might have helped the reader grasp historical information and envision the past of the dynasty in a way hard to achieve before the proliferation of books. While previous studies tend to downplay these historical novels for their Confucian didacticism and lack of artistic sophistication, this paper argues that it may be more fruitful to understand these books as cultural products that respond to the reader’s desire to “know,” to possess knowledge of “our” history, which in turn create a sense of participate in a community of shared information and dynastic consciousness.