Diversity, deception, and discernment in the late sixteenth century: A comparative study of Li Zhi's 'Book to Burn' and Montaigne's 'Essays'

This dissertation begins with the observation that although Li Zhi and Montaigne verbally denounce duplicity, their short prose writings abound with contradictions reminiscent of those they abjure. In each case, culturally specific factors motivate these contemporary authors' disgust with unstable signification: Montaigne builds upon Biblical theories of a perfect Edenic language, while Li Zhi grounds his thought in the Confucian notion of the rectification of names (zhengming). Despite the diverse, local origins of their views, both authors discursively promote transparent signification. What then accounts for the prevalence of contradiction in their works? Surely the authors' elaborate process of writing, editing, rewriting, and republishing generated some of these inconsistencies. But larger social factors also played a role. I examine ways in which the unreliable signification apparent in the texts resembles instabilities in three semiotic codes in sixteenth century China and France: clothing, money, and books. Like Montaigne's Essays, and Li Zhi's Book to Burn, signification in each of these domains was complicated by the proliferation of signs, fluctuations in their meaning, and deliberate falsification. These disturbances in signification resulted in similar effects: they awakened readers to the contingency of the texts before their eyes. Thus just as social actors had to stay alert to the dangers of counterfeit coins and impostors dressed in finery, so, I argue, must readers of Li Zhi and Montaigne's texts learn to discern for themselves when to trust and when to doubt the authors' words. Developing personal judgment becomes a central focus not only of the texts themselves---as evidenced in the authors' iconoclastie rereadings of classical texts---but also of contemporary readers' responses to these books. Indeed, in the late sixteenth century, readers of many genres began to diverge from traditional, "pious" modes of reading and actively appropriate texts. By fostering these skills in readers and by wrestling with the timeless and trans-cultural epistemological issues of representation and misrepresentation, Li Zhi and Montaigne's texts both mirror and magnify problems of signification acutely relevant to developing early modern societies both East and West.