In the period from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, East Asia witnessed changes in the Chinese tribute system, the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu invasion of Korea, the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu in Japan, and the prosperity of the High Qing era. This extraordinary period disrupted the existing China-centered diplomatic system; however, at the same time, a fertile ground was created for new perceptions of the respective immediate neighbor for each individual state. In the struggle to achieve or maintain domestic and external stability, intellectuals, officials, and even commoners reflected on ways to express their individual and communal narratives that contributed to their nation’s history. This thesis explores Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese cultural and diplomatic interactions from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century based on primary sources with a special focus on diplomatic envoys’ travel reports.

This essay analyzes Zhang Dai’s life and his major literary work, and argues that the expression of self is the core of his writings. By contextualizing Zhang Dai’s work in the Ming-Qing dynastic transition, this essay explains the hidden motives of Zhang Dai to justify, preserve and identify his self through literary practice, suggests that this explosion of self-expression is not only a literary response to the historical event of dynastic transition, but also a reflection of the cultural and literary trends of the 17th century. This essay also provides close readings and genre study to Zhang Dai’s poems, prose and biographical writings, and demonstrates how the expression of the writer’s self works in different types of literary genres.

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