Political Presence and Discourse Translation in the Writing of Genealogy Prefaces by Scholars in the Early Ming Dynasty

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, with the promulgation of state authoritative documents such as Compiling the Genealogy of Imperial Edict, private revision of genealogy was endowed with political significance. Accordingly, the preface generated based on genealogy faced a new writing context. Under the strong influence of the political authority, the scholars in the early Ming dynasty wrote far more prefaces than in the previous dynasties. They were both national elites and local representatives. In the writing of genealogy prefaces, they created ancestor idols by narrating the history of the family, made the combination of ethical logic of family and nation by explaining the significance of compiling genealogy, and drew a new picture of the local order in the construction of the ideal family. This process of "state-local" discourse translation not only formed a writing style of preface with Ming Dynasty characteristics but also helped the national political thoughts to infiltrate effectively into the grass-roots level of the people and even built a local governance mode unique to the Ming and Qing dynasties. It marked the new development of the functional orientation and the maturity of the genealogy preface as the sequence of applied prose. Breaking away from the aesthetic limit of literature and returning to the functional perspective to observe the genealogy preface is probably of enlightening significance to the study of style.