Monarchism of an Enlightened Emperor——A View of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty's The Emperor's Norms

Owing to their excluding political and historical positions,emperors and kings in time of ancient China have been a lasting concern and leading subject of study.Bofore the publication of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty's The Emperor's Norms,many individual results of study,brilliant papers and even systematic volumes had appeared in this field. However,most such studies either involved a specific experor or simply compared one emperor with the other;none of them discussed the emperorship synthetically as a political phenomenon.It was Emperor Taizong's The Emperor's Norms,which presented his distinct idea about the emperorship as an enlightened emperor himself,that changed the situation of this academic field in ideology and writing.In his The Experor's Norms,Experor Taizong,by combining history with reality and theory with practice,made a comprehensive analysis of the emperorship as a historical phenomenon and brought forward a universal understanding of it in his days.Hence an outstanding work in relation to historiographical theory and political ideology in ancient China.