Yuan Jue

Life

The Yuan family was an established lineage, and Yuan Jue was a great-grandson of Shao, who had served as an associate privy councillor under the Song; his father was Yuan Hong and his grandfather Yuan Sidao. His father-in-law is given as Zheng Taiyuan or Shi Binzhi; his sons-in-law were Zhao Mengguan and Chen Gou, and his eldest son was Yuan Guan.

As a child, he was already known for literary talent and read the books left by earlier generations of his family day and night. He first studied with Dai Shuaichu, later entered the circle of Wang Shenning, and then associated with Shu Yuexiang, absorbing the learning of these scholars. His household possessed a large collection of books, and he had personally encountered the literature of the Central Plain; his learning was consequently considered firmly grounded.

He was recommended as a maocai yideng and appointed head of Lize Academy. At the beginning of the Dade era, Yan Fu, Cheng Wenhai, and Wang Gou jointly recommended him, and he moved to a post as a proofreader in the Hanlin Academy and National History Institute. When the Southern Suburban altar was first established, he submitted ten proposals on the suburban sacrifices; the ritual officials praised the breadth of his learning and adopted many of them. He was then promoted to Yingfeng Hanlin Wenzi, Associate Drafter of Imperial Edicts, concurrently serving as a compiler in the National History Institute.

He successively served as Hanlin daizhi, Direct Academician of the Jixian Academy, and Direct Academician of the Hanlin National History Institute, while also co-editing the dynastic history; in the first year of Zhizhi he became a Hanlin Academician for Lectures, and at the beginning of Taiding he resigned and returned home. During his service in the literary offices, court rescripts and inscriptions for meritorious officials were mostly drafted by him; he also helped compile the grand compendium of three reigns, settle statutes, and petition for the purchase of surviving books from the Song, Liao, and Jin dynasties. After returning home, he restored the site of the old Southern Garden, built a small pavilion, and read there.

Learning and literary work

His learning extended to changes in ritual and music, the ordering of official lineages, the genealogies of scholar-official families, and concise accounts of the various schools; he traced matters to their origins and grasped their essentials, and his learning was regarded as pre-eminent east of the Zhe River. He once listed five shortcomings in his own reading and writing: indiscriminate reading, which made him broad but lacking in essentials; admiration for the conduct of the ancients, which made him timid and without a firm position; repeated changes of subject while compiling precedents, which produced labor without achievement; rushing to follow others’ strengths but always falling behind, from haste and overambition; and delight in composition without having built up fundamentals, which he regarded as the worst of all.

His associates included Zhao Mengfu, Ma Run, and the Buddhist monk Shi Miaosheng. In the development of Yuan poetry, Zhao Zi’ang, Deng Shanzhi, and Yuan Jue’s circle exchanged poems, and poetry consequently underwent a change; Yu, Yang, Fan, and Jie rose together in the same period. His calligraphy and writings circulated throughout the empire.

Works

His works include 《易說》, 《春秋說》, 《延祐四明志》, and 《清容居士集》, the last in fifty juan. He also wrote 《澄懷錄》, in one juan.

Death and legacy

He died at the age of sixty-one; another account gives his age as sixty-two. He was posthumously granted the office of Canzhi zhengshi in the Jiangzhe Provincial Secretariat, enfeoffed as Duke of Chenliu Commandery, and given the posthumous name Wenqing, also written 文淸.

More than two decades after his death, the compilation of the histories of the Song, Liao, and Jin began, and envoys sought surviving writings and old accounts from commanderies and states; the Yuan family’s holdings were the most abundant, with thousands of books sufficient for documentary use. His descendants copied and transmitted surviving drafts by hand, so writings from centuries past did not disappear; Yuan Jue was consequently regarded as having made a real contribution to the preservation of the literary heritage.