The Encyclopedia as Textbook : Selling Private Chinese Encyclopedias in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

摘要

This paper focuses on a small subset of privately compiled and commercially published Chinese examination encyclopedias and discusses how the expansion of examination culture and commercial printing shaped the production and circulation of encyclopedias in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It examines how encyclopedias came to be produced and used as textbooks and how they were increasingly used as reference tools. It combines the discussion of the changing material aspects of encyclopedias with an analysis of the intellectual politics of their production.