明代中葉，由於受到王學末流倡導直指本心，主張現成良知，視文字為糟粕之影響，致古學寖衰、學風凋敝，有識之士，憂學術之隳壞，紛紛起而矯之。楊慎(1488-1559)允稱其間代表。慎博學多聞，雖遭世宗朝議大禮之禍，長期謫貶西南隅，然著述不輟，撰《丹鉛總錄》、《丹鉛雜錄》、《讀苑醍醐》、《藝林伐山》等書，考釋經史，於古籍詞義之舊注，每多再思辨正，雖精闢者不少，惟以身處荒陬，取書翻查不易，每斷之以記憶，又「好偽撰古書，以證成己說」，每成見詬之尤。致同代學者，有不愜其說而著書駁之者。陳耀文（約1523-1619）《正楊》四卷，便專為糾駁楊說而作；該書之體例：先列楊說，繼以駁論，「嵎夷既略」便是其中一條。該條所論者，乃經史古籍如《尚書》、《左傳》、《孟子》、《史記》、《漢書》中，「略」之詞義；經蒐集、比對相關用例，並從上下文義，而忽略其引申義，確屬不妥，陳耀文於文末批之曰：「夫字有數義也，而執謬若此，故知固哉！」允中其病。

WangYangming was the major leader in the Neo-Confucian School of Mind that also was mainstream in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. This School of principle developed the idea of innate consciousness, arguing that the writing was not valuable to society, so cause problems for the decline of classical literature. Most scholars worried about this situation and sought to correct these mistakes in the literary circles in the Ming Dynasty. Yang Shen (1488~1559) was one of the representative scholars. As a result of the Great rites controversy, he was exiled to Yunnan. He spent over 30 years in Yunnan and continued his career writing for this period. Although he lived in the wasteland, he still did his best to read canon of literary works. He was good at making a survey of the classics and historical reference and then produced a substantial amount of commentary inspired by the classical literature and sage's speech. His famous work is the Danqian zonglu, Danqian zalu, Duyuan tihu, Yilin fashan, etc. On the other hand, some other scholars didn't accept his opinions on Yang Shen's books; they also produced an amount of writing to refute Yang Shen's comment on his books. For instance, in the volume 4 of Zhengyang, Chen Yaowen (about 1523~1619) criticized Yang Shen's with his own thought and corrected his mistakes, specifically ”Yu yi ji lue” is one of the famous examples of Chen's review.Chen Yaowen made a survey of Classic of History, Zuo Zhuan, Mencius, Records of the Grand Historian, and Book of Han to compare the definitions of word ”lue.” In fact, he thought Yang's review is inappropriate because he overlook the extended meaning of the word ”lue.” In the end of ”Yu yi ji lue,” Chen said: ”the word ”fu” with lots of definitions, Yang's speech is improper.”