The Study On The Jian'an Prose

Jian'an literature is an important part of classical literature. On the poetry and CiFu of this time, the academia has achieved a lot. However, the study on the Jian'an prose is relatively few. In terms of subject matter or literary style and expression, Jian'an prose reveals a new look. This article takes all the prose of Latter Han and all the prose of Three Kingdoms that edited by Yan Kejun as the main object to study. From the text and the cultural background, it deeply explores the creative situation, literary ideas and fashion of the time. It seeks to make objective and accurate evaluation on the status of Jian'an prose of literary history. The thesis is constituted by an introduction and seven chapters.The beginning is an introduction which discusses the three questions. The first is the significance of this topic and the research scope. It determines the starting and the ending time of Jian'an prose and the text of this issue. The second is the retrospective of the study status which is divided into three stages, focusing on the third stage, far from the early fifties. It is already quite rich in the sorting text, the writers' life, thought and creativity and other aspects. But the research of Jian'an prose is limited to a few representative writers such as the three-Cao and the Seven Scholars of Jian'an and less concerned about the other writers and works. Sometimes the research is from content or a stylistic point of view, the research perspectives and methods need to further expand and dig. The third is to determine the contents and the methods of this issue, as well as the principles in the research on the development and the characteristics of Jian'an prose.The first chapter introduces the creative background of Jian'an prose, which is divided into three aspects. The first is the social and political background. The Jian'an period can be divided into two periods bounding by the Battle of Red Cliff in Jian'an thirteen years (208). The political situation of the early years is turbulent. In the last years, the Three Kingdoms set up a more stable social order. The second is the ideological and cultural background. Adapting to the multivariate political situation, the thought and the culture at this time is also very active. The third is the psychology of the scholars in Jian'an. There are both the romance of Han celebrities and open-mind created by the times in the scholars of Jian'an.The second,the third and the fourth chapter discuss the Jian'an prose in several categories from the stylistic point of view. The second chapter discusses two styles, the rescripts and the memorials, which have strong purpose, practicality and utilitarian. The rescripts of Jian'an are diversity. Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Cao Rui, Kong Rong and Cao Zhi create different characteristic rescripts. The memorials are closely related to the social life. Some state their political views, some recommend candidates, some persuade or refuse to show their attitude, some talk about military and diplomatic, and some study the literary and culture. These rescripts are important manifestation of Jian'an scholars who participate actively in politics. In addition, Jian'an memorials which have precise wording and reasonable content show a distinctive character.The third chapter discusses epistolary writing, argumentative essays and preface prose. Jian'an epistolary writing has strong feelings. There are both strong military and political documents and the increasingly prosperous expressing private feelings articles. From the subject and the content, the military and political epistolary writing can be divided into public affairs, recommending elite, persuading or refusing to express political attitude, the foreign and military affairs and so on. The private epistolary writing can be divided into expressing personal feelings, narrating things, expressing their own opinions, describing the scenery, the Jie essays, the deathbed letters and so on. Jian'an argumentative essays almost cover all the argumentative essays listed in the feature articles and discourse styles lately. These articles inherit Han Dynasty and have new development and changes in the literary and polemical skills. They promote the prosperous of argumentative essays during Zhengshi period and the Jin Dynasty. There are more than ten kinds of Jian'an preface prose. They are classical book's preface, poetry's preface, Fu's preface, tablet inscription's preface, inscription's preface, Song's preface, elegy's preface, the mourning writings'preface, Zan's preface, Qi's preface, humoristic literature's preface, the preface on commenting characters and so on. The creation is so prosperous. That is because the literature body has to be identified and self-consciousness is enhanced in the creative activities during Jian'an period.The fourth chapter discusses the four words rhyme styles such as the tablet inscription, the elegy, the mourning writings, the Song, the Zan, the Zhen and so on. It also discusses the essays and other genres. The tablet inscription began to decline after the prosperous during Huan and Ling Dynasty. Jian'an tablet inscription can be divided into tomb tablet inscription and the tablet inscription which records meritorious. They both show a degree of literary color in diction, syntax and so on. Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, the popularity of private posthumous title and the consciousness of individual life make Jian'an scholars begin to attach importance to express individual grief in the mourning writings. Cao Zhi's mourning writings are representatives of them. His works reflect the distinctive features of privatization and lyricism. Cao Zhi's mourning writings have become the literary works expressing his personal emotional because the close relations with his relatives and friends and the lyricism in the narrative. The mourning writings such as elegy which mourns for the infant, condolence writings which pay tribute to the present and the past also began to express personal grief beyond the solemn moral narrative.Under the influence of the tradition praise, the Song prose in Jian'an, which was although still as part of the political discourse in the "Gallery Temple literature", also had praised everyday things and expressed aspirations. As a four-character-based verse form, the Song prose in Jian'an still had a strong fashion of the ancient worship. Its linguistic parallelism and the preface of the Song prose reflect the development and changes of the prose style along with the infiltration and the influence between all kinds of styles. During late Han to the Jian'an period, the stylistic diversity and the weak awareness of identifying stylistic created some styles confusion, such as the Zan and the Song Prose. Praise is the newcomer meaning of the Zan prose. The similar in the form and the function of the two styles caused the confused use, but there are still difference between the two styles in the article length, language style, content and stylistic features, the author's emotional attitude, etc. Cao Zhi's "Painting Zan" is the earliest visible works of Painting Zan in "all the prose from ancient times, three generations, the Qin and Han Dynasty Three Kingdoms to Six Dynasties" which edited by Yan Kejun. The Jian'an Zan works are all verse in four words in the language form. There is only one rhyme from the beginning to the end, two sentences for a rhythm and pause. These works are generally short in length, mostly eight sentences, there are also six or twelve ones. The content of Jian'an inscription writings which undertake the Han Dynasty is still toast and alert primarily. There are both admonitory speech and self-alert words. However, the new changes have taken place in the inscriptions of this period. There are some new kinds of inscriptions, such as describing things and the tablet inscriptions. Some of them have strong literary and high aesthetic value, and some mix with other genres, and some show obvious features of Ci Fu. Followed the Han Dynasty, according to the admonish objects, the Jian'an Zhen articles are still divided into official Zhen and private Zhen. In addition, Zhang Hong creates a pure chanting article "Gui Cai Pillow Zhen" which has completely deviated from the function of admonishment. In the section of the essays and other genres, the paper deals with the Qi style, the chain style, humoristic literature, the Shi style and so on.The fifth chapter discusses the total look of Jian'an prose from three aspects. First, both the stylistic development and literary creation is mature. In terms of the number of single works, or the total number of articles, the Jian'an prose has developed significantly compared with that of the Han Dynasty. In the more than 40 literary styles, there are more skillful authors and more representative articles in almost every style. Second, the Jian'an prose reflects the fashion of the time, including the sense of taking the sadness as the beauty, through the landscape to convey the joy of nature and humorous atmosphere and so on. The third is the awakening of human consciousness under the text. In the face of turbulence, Jian'an scholars'vision is more open, their life is richer, and their emotional experience is more delicate. Their articles are in pursuit of the unity of practical and aesthetic. The artistic skills are diversity and the individual lyricism is gradually enhanced.The sixth chapter mainly discusses the literary thought in the Jian'an prose. The articles discussing the literary thought have been prosperity in Jian'an period, though we can't yet found a systematic literature review. Represented by Cao Pi's Dianlun·Lunwen, compared with the scholars in Han Dynasty, Jian'an scholars'appreciation is active in exchangement and communication. Under the development of the literary styles, they talk about all kinds of articles and their awareness of distinguishing the literary styles has further enhanced. They can comment on the usefulness and the value of the article, and put forward some principles of literary criticism, and also comment on some literature works of the ancient and the current. They take the literary criticism as a part of literature and an important manifestation of the value of individual life.Based on the foregoing discussion, the seventh chapter determines the status of the Jian'an prose in the literary history. Relative to the prose of the Qin and Han Dynasty, there are both inheritance and new changes and development in the Jian'an prose. It opens a new aesthetic style for the prose of the Wei-Jin of Six Dynasties Period. Jian'an can be called the time for transforming the articles.