Eight-legged essay
The eight-legged essay (Chinese: 八股文; pinyin: bāgǔwén) was a style of essay writing that had to be mastered to pass the imperial examinations during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The eight-legged essay is named so because it was divided into eight sections.
The term "essay" itself originates with Michel de Montaigne in 1580, when he published Essays. The term "essay" then described a genera of literary endeavor. Montaigne's essays demonstrated a narrative deductive rather than inductive approach to examining and explaining experience. The eight-legged Confucian examination response is more an example of a prescribed organizational pattern than it is an essay in the broader understanding of the term, something more akin to the modern five-paragraph essay in that conforming to the criteria demonstrated an aspiring scholar's ability to explain ideas within the confines of an authorized or expected pattern. Accordingly, we must use the term "essay" loosely in this instance.
The eight-legged essay was formulated around a rigid, artificial structure. It tested, among other things, the examinees' knowledge of the Four Books and Five Classics and ability to insert classical allusions and idioms at the places deemed appropriate. The structure of much of the essay included heavy parallelism and redundancy, rhetorical features that survive in modern Chinese expository writing.
The eight "legs" or sections were as follows:
In addition to the rules governing the number of sentences for a particular section, there were also strict limits on the total number of words in the essay. Certain offensive words and words prone to reveal the candidate’s identity or status were also to be avoided.
Words, phraseology, or references to events that occurred after the death of Mencius in 298 BC were not allowed, since the essay was supposed to explain a quote from one of the Confucian classics by "speaking for the sage"; and Confucius or his disciples could not have referred to events that occurred after their deaths.
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