A Study Of Notes In The Song Dynasty

Despite the fact that the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) was the heyday of literary sketch in its development with the full maturity marked by wide range of contents and improved structure, the study of sketches written in the Song Dynasty so far is still dominated by the methodology of traditional punctuation and collation-the exploration of the genre itself still lags behind that there are just a few publications of the dynastic history research of the literary form in t his period of time; the part of Song Dynasty literary sketches is so roughly tre ated in the general-history study of the development of the style that little effo rt is made to an in-depth understanding of the evolution of the genre in Song Dynasty. Therefore, this thesis is intended to make some endeavors to promote the study of the Song sketches by broadening the horizon and the way of research. The paper is divided into five chapters, with focuses as follows:In the first chapter the concept and the range of the topic will be defined. C onsidering that the definitions and scopes of the subject vary from scholar to sch olar in the field at present, this chapter begins with a literature review of the existing ideas before the proposal of the author’s own view on the literary for m of sketch.In chapter two the category and classification of Song sketches are to be t reated. Based on an examination of the division and classification of Song sket ches in General Catalogue Summary of Complete Library in the Four Branche s of Literature and the discussion of a variety of existing academic perspective s on Song sketches, the author tries to make his own classification of the liter ary form in Song Dynasty.Chapter three deals with the development and evolvement of the genre in the two-hundred-year period of both the Northern and the Southern Song Dynasties, which can be roughly summarized as follows:in early Northern Song Dynasty, sketches on government affairs and anecdotes about the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were prevalent, in the middle period of Northern Song Dynasty, notes of conflicts between parties and the sketches of arts and personal affairs prevailed; while in the early period of Southern Song Dynasty, writings reflecting the patriotism, history, sufferings of losing the northern land to the Jin Dynasty, and the travel notes by ambassadors and envoys to the Jin Dynasty were popular; in the resurgence period, historical records, diplomatic memoirs and travel notes reigned over, and in the late Southern Song Dynasty, sketches of urban culture by man of letters emerged.The fourth chapter takes the study of "privateness" tendency in Song sketches as its focus. To date, scholars agree that during the Song Dynasty scholars and literati, shifting their eyes from grand narratology of history or imperial court to the themes concerning their own lives or situations, realized the features of "privateness" and "popularity" in literary sketches; however, the summation of the features, the research on the significance of the characteristics, and the study of specific works, all these have not yet been made. It was not a simple act that the writers recorded down the details of their own lives, but the beginning that they realized the personal living space, and came to front stage of articles instead of staying behind the scene. From this perspective, this chapter will probe how those writers described themselves as objects of narration, exploring how it happened and how it developed.In the last part, the values and influence of the Song sketches will be discussed. Serving as a link between the predecessors and the successors, the Song sketches characterized with increased number of writers and amount of works, and expanded range of contents when compared with the previous works. This thesis will discuss its historical, literary, and academic significance and the influence of privateness feature on the following generations of literature creation. Finally, this paper will examine the versions of Song sketches that were introduced into Korea, the creation of ancient Korean anecdotes and its relationship with Chinese literary sketches...