Literary Inquisition, or wenziyu (Chinese: 文字獄 "imprisonment due to writings") refers to the persecution of intellectuals for their writings by the authority in Imperial China. Wenziyu flourished during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The persecutions could owe to a single phrase or word, which the ruler considered offensive. Some of these owed to the naming taboo. In a serious case, not only the writer but also his families and relatives would be killed. There were wenziyu before the Ming and Qing dynasties. The poet Su Shi of the Song Dynasty was jailed for several months by the emperor owing to some of his poems. In the bandit novel Water Margin, which has its setting in the Song Dynasty, the leading character Song Jiang, originally a petty official, became the head of a bandit group after he was sentenced to death for a poem he had written during his drunkenness. The Ming Dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang, who had a humble beginning, caused many wenziyu. The Qing rulers, who were sensitive to anti-Manchu feelings among the Han Chinese, also carried out many wenziyu, including the so-called "Case of the History of the Ming Dynasty" (明史案) under the reign of Emperor Kangxi in which about 70 were killed and more exiled. Jinyong used this case as a prologue for his novel The Deer and the Cauldron.
References
- Luther Carrington Goodrich, The Literary Inquisition of Ch'ien-Lung. Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1935; New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1966.
- Zhongguo da baike quanshu. First Edition. Beijing; Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe. 1980-1993.
