禁书、士争与乱象:晚明出版业的监管与失序

The Prohibition against Books,Power Struggles among Scholar-Bureaucrats and Disorder:the Loss of Government Supervision over the Publishing Industry in the late Ming Dynasty

晚明时期民间出版业繁荣,私刻、坊刻和书肆构成活跃明代出版市场的主要力量。相较于宋、元两代以官刻为主流的出版业态,明代中央政府在出版市场监管方面面临着前所未有的历史课题。面对晚明出版市场混乱、出版物质量低下的状况,明政府虽然意识到问题的严重性,却因为缺乏可做依据的典章制度,也没有设立负责执行的专门机构,无力采取行之有效的出版管理措施,所颁布的出版政令和采取的行政措施并没有对出版市场造成实质性的影响。明代中央官僚集团对于出版管理的理解更侧重于维护统治阶级内部思想统一,将其视作士争与政争的契机。明政府这种出版市场监管失位的境况,不仅导致了晚明出版市场失序繁荣的畸态,更造成了士风浮靡与统治思想的混乱。

The late Ming Dynasty saw the prosperity of the private publishing industry.Private printing,workshop printing and bookstores were the major players in the publishing market at that time.In contrast with the publishing industry in the Song and Yuan Dynasties,the main component of which was government-sponsored publishing,the situation in the Ming Dynasty brought anunprecedented task to the government,which was to supervise the publishing market.In the late Ming,the publishing market was disorderd,and many publications were of low quality.Being aware of the serious problems though,the Ming government failed to take effective actions due to a lack of applicable laws,and an absence of executive agencies.The decrees and administrative measures hardly had effects on the publishing market.The central bureaucracy's regulation of publishing activities was mainly about maintaining the unity of the ideology among the ruling class.And they saw it as a tool for party and political struggles.The lack of supervion not only led to a disorderly prosperity of the publishing market in the late Ming Dynasty,but also caused the zeitgeist of extravagancy among scholar-bureaucrats and the inconsistency of the ideology of the ruling class.