Abstract des Vortrags

Inheritor of a "Rebellious" Mind? Yang Yun and His Letter to Sun Huizong

Yang Yun (?–54 B.C.), Sima Tan's great-grandson and Sima Qian's grandson via the maternal line, is depicted in the Hanshu as the first to have read the "Record of His Lord the Grand Scribe" (Taishigong ji), and also as the first one to transmit his ancestor’s work (zushu), and to have made it known to a larger public.

However, from the scarce material extant it is not so easy to gain a picture of Yang Yun as a person. Could his tragic end – he was finally charged of high treason against his emperor (dani budao) and executed – be related in some way to his involvement with his ancestors' work? And which message did Chu Shaosun intend to convey to later readers by adding material on Yang Yun to the Shiji text? What information can be taken from the letter that Yang Yun wrote to his friend Sun Huizong, and for what possible reason had Xiao Tong decided to select it for the section "letters" (shu) in the Wenxuan, right after Li Ling’s letter to Su Wu and his grandfather Sima Qian’s letter to Ren An?