ABSTRACT
In the sphere of the arts of the brush, the Yuan saw an intensification of the "amateur" ideal, as Chinese painters and calligraphers produced works with strong personal and literary meanings and allusions which were directed at an audience of like-minded gentlemen. The suspension of the civil examinations until 1315 is perhaps the clearest sign of Mongol disregard for the Confucian elite and its intellectual and cultural concerns. The founding of the Ming dynasty by Zhu Yuanzhang in 1368 did not initially lead to new developments in intellectual culture and philosophy. New ideas did arise within the broad field of Confucian thought, however. The Ming was a period of great dynamism in China's commercial economy. The literary history of the Ming can reasonably be understood as a sequence of movements or groupings among writers who shared certain ideas and practices.
