A Study On Liu Xizai's The Summary Of Arts

Liu Xizai was a famous critic in China Qing Dynasty. The Summary of Arts was a book of him about literary and art criticism. There were six parts including The Summary of Prose, The Summary of Poem, The Summary of Fu, The Summary of Ci, The Summary of Calligraphy, The Summary of Jingyi in the book. It had become another work since The Literary Mind and Carving of Dragons which expounds all forms of literary and art.As the first part of the book, The Summary of Prose had an attribute of guiding principles. Liu Xizai both had the idea of learning from the classics and the philosophy of mind of Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming. The essay had detailed analyses of the evolution of prose and traditional theories such as expression of emotion and argument, break and continuation etc. Besides, there were good opinions about how to comment on and learn from the predecessors.By comparison with prose, The Summary of Poem discussed the character of Chinese poem. Liu Xizai posed the viewpoint of understanding the author by knowing his historical background. He also summarized many writing methods about poem and expounded his compatible theory of artistic style.In The Summary of Fu, Liu Xizai first expounded the origin, evolution, and nature of Fu, then analyzed the relationship between material world and oneself. He also discussed the art of narrating in detail and the creation of artistic image. At last, Liu Xizai analyzed the concordance of one' s moral standing and quality of his works.In The Summary of Ci, Liu Xizai made detailed analyses of Ci. On the contrary, his analyses of Qu were simple. At the beginning of the essay, Liu Xizai put special emphasis on the status of Ci. He considered that there were three kinds of Ci. In addition, Liu Xizai discussed the writing skills and some essential factors in writing such as character, word, temperament and so on. He also expounded the artistic style of Ci. At the end, by comparing Qu with Ci, Liu Xizai discussed the character and writing skills of Qu briefly.The theory of image and connotation had deeply influenced Liu Xizai' s thought of calligraphy. He analyzed the evolution and system of Chinese classical calligraphy. Meantime, Liu Xizai expressed opinions about artistic style of calligraphy. At last, He summed up writing skills of different patterns of calligraphy, especially of cursive.The research object of The Summary of Jingyi is Eight-part Essay. Liu Xizai emphasized the same importance of one' s works and moral character. The criticism and research method were appropriate. Liu Xizai's perspectives about the evolution of Jingyi can help us understand it better. The top valuable part in the essay was the theory about writing skills.There were many redeeming features on criticism, research method and specific comments in The Summary of Arts. However, it still had some limits and shortcomings. For example, Liu Xizai emphasized etiquette too much. Some comments were not accurate etc.