What is an author in the 'Sikuquanshu'? Evidential research and authorship in late Qianlong era China (1771--1795)

Using a framework of the “dialectic between imposition and appropriation” articulated by Roger Chartier, the dissertation examines authorship in the Sikuquanshu, the bibliography and collectanea produced by Chinese officials under the auspices of the Qianlong emperor between 1771 and 1795. The study has two parts, which consider authorship in its complementary aspects. The first part investigates the cultural and administrative context for the production of the Sikuquanshu before-the-book summaries (shuqian tiyao), i.e., the Sikuquanshu bibliographers as authors within a Qing bureaucratic environment. The second part explores the before-the-book summaries to determine how the summary writers viewed the authorship participants who were responsible for the literary works in the bibliography, i.e., the author as constructed by the bibliographers as readers.; Through a review of historical evidence, the first part of the study makes a distinction between the Sikuquanshu as process and product, seeking to identify the officials within the Sikuquanshu office who composed the bibliographic summaries. Major findings of Part I are that composition of the Sikuquanshu summaries can be localized within three groups of officials in the Sikuquanshu office; and that before-the book summaries, in the Sikuquanshu collectanea were composed and revised in an iterative process that was not strictly rationalized by bureaucratic routines.; Consisting of statistical and qualitative content analysis on a randomized sample of summaries in the Sikuquanshu collectanea, the second part of the study identifies the words that the summary writers chose to describe authorship participants. Major findings of Part II are that zhuan (“to write”) is the normative function word for the author, but there is a statistically significant classificatory effect in its distribution across the divisions of the Fourfold Classification; that bian (“to edit”) forms a pair with zhuan to explain the compilation of posthumous collections by individuals, with family relationships determinative in the production of such collections; that the preface and the postscript (xuba) are among the most frequently cited evidence from books; and that the Sikuquanshu bibliographers viewed themselves as legitimate authorship participants of works in the collectanea.