REVIVING AN ANCIENT FILIAL IDEAL: THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PRACTICE OF LUMU

Lumu, a private act of mourning ritual, grew into a cultural phenomenon with considerable appeal in the seventeenth century. The era saw a range of activities that placed lumu at the center of the neo-Confucian call for moral cultivation, and lumu was a focal point of acting out Confucian virtue. This paper details the cases that centered on three preeminent men-Feng Shaoxu, Sun Qifeng, and Fang Yizhi. It demonstrates that, whether by promoting it through public lectures, staging ceremonies by the hut, enacting it collectively and cross-generationally in the family, or commemorating it with poetry, essay, and painting, the staunch Confucian elite in the seventeenth century identified a common cause for action. Lumu was not just an act of mourning or filial piety; it was perceived as a preferable tool for perfecting moral cultivation and for exhibiting the moral strength of an individual or a family at a time of perceived moral decline. The extreme challenge represented by a relentless routine lay at the very center of its appeal-lumu projected the image of an ultrafilial son in a way that other filial deeds did not.