Official's Education in Early China: a preliminary analysis of Yuelu Academy's Wei li zhi guan ji qianshou 為吏治官及黔首

The Wei li zhi guan ji qianshou 為吏治官及黔首 is a Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE) manuscript acquired by the Yuelu Academy of Changsha, Hunan, in 2007. This text was a handbook for imperial officials which focused mainly on two subjects: the correct administration procedures for an official position and the moral values that officials had to follow while administering their posts. Due to the peculiar format of the written text, scholars have dedicated much research to the structural features of the manuscript, whereas less attention has been paid to its semantic characteristics. The aim of my talk will be to propose a reading of the contents of the Wei li zhi guan ji qianshou, based on an in-depth analysis of the text. This analysis will be primarily focused on how the sentences were composed (which will include the study of different rhetoric and prosodic devices, such as the use of rhyme, parallelism etc.), and will aim to contribute to the studies on the text, paying special attention to the way in which its contents have been arranged. The understanding of these matters could therefore help us to better understand the purposes with which the text had been written.