Setting the Stage for Success: Ancient Chinese Manuscripts and The Formation of Chinese Thought

Ancient Chinese literary accounts narrate of exchanges where thinkers brilliantly debate their opponents, and win arguments with witty and playful remarks. Oratory has long been known as part of the skillset of the intellectual class in Warring States China (453 – 221 BCE), but until recently, little could be said on how this skill was acquired. In this presentation, I argue that among the many ancient manuscripts of recent discovery in China, we also have “performance supports,” by which I mean texts of literary content use as tools in practices of knowledge acquisition. For aspiring intellectuals, performance supports were aids to become fluent in the philosophical and literary debates happening during the Warring States. Thanks to the new manuscript evidence, we begin to comprehend practical aspects that led to the formation of ancient Chinese thought. This focus on synchronic developments complements the use of manuscripts to discuss the development and formation of textual traditions overtime. 

Maddalena Poli earned her Ph.D. Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. The primary sources she works with are manuscripts produced during the Warring States era (457 – 221 BCE), a crucial moment in the formation of ancient Chinese literature. In particular, she focuses on what manuscripts tell us about educational practices during the last centuries BCE, and how ideas developed and spread at the time. She has forthcoming publications on new manuscript discoveries that bear on the history of Confucius’ Analects in Early China, as well as a paper on literary representations of Fu Yue, a famous ancient minister, across textual sources. Her forthcoming book, Political Writings in Ancient China, is a study of six Warring States manuscripts preserved at Tsinghua University. Maddalena has a strong commitment to promote open-access scholarship, and has written for the Digital Orientalist, Manuscript Studies (forthcoming May 2025), and the DRH. Before joining Yale as MacMillan Postdoctoral Associate in East Asian Studies, Maddalena taught at Pomona College several courses on premodern Chinese history, such as A Culinary History of China, Confucius and his Interpreters, and The Many Lives of Confucius. You can find syllabi and course reviews at maddalenapoli.com.