Book Burning and Early Modern Chinese Literature: The Case of Dong Tuo (1620–1686)

How might the deliberate destruction of writing be understood as an act of literary expression? Amid the upheavals of the Ming-Qing transition, prominent Chinese writers set fire to their manuscripts (together with their inkstones, brushes, and wooden printing blocks). The case of Dong Tuo (1620–1686), a Ming loyalist who conducted three bibliocausts in 1643, 1646, and 1656, illuminates the complex motivations behind acts of textual immolation in the early modern period: repudiation of juvenilia, anxiety that print corrupts learning, political protest under threat of censorship, and a search for spiritual transcendence. Against this backdrop, Dong’s dream chronicles, poetry, and the novella Supplement for Journey to the West (Xiyou bu) reframe book burning not as a rejection but as a catalyst of literary creativity, attuned to the mutability of the written word. Fire, for Dong and his contemporaries, was less an endpoint than an instrument of editorial self-curation and control—a means to shape how they might be read.