| As the greatest philosopher and man of letters, Zhuang Zhou and his writings enjoy the position of double lauret in Chinese philosophy and literature. The present dissertation aims to explore the literary value of Essays of Zhuang Zhou so as to make up the comparative shortage in this regard.Apart from "preface" and "Conclusion", the thesis consists of 7 chapters. Chapter I examines the basic subjects in Essays so as to pave the way for the following analysis. To start with, the thesis stays a little while examining Zhuang Zhou's name, age of birth, career and authenticity of his works, then, through a detailed research and argumentation of his birthplace, confirms that he was born in MengYi (Northwest of Shangqiu, Hen'nan Province) of Song Kingdom in the Warring Period. Based upon this, the thesis goes on the discussion of the cultural backgrounds of Essays, which reveals that Essays is of culture of Shang dynasty and Song Dynasty rather than the Chu Culture. This is closely related to and directly led to the philosophical and literary characteristics of Essays . The culture of Shang and Song dynasties, which had absorbed the cultures of the bordering regions, is a special cultural system with Yinshang Culture as its base, and Taoism as its core. After this, the writer attempts to clarify quite a few of problems which have long been confusing to scholars, denies that the philosophical system of Zhuangzhou is "an idealist and passive ideological system for the declining class of slave-owners"; and confirms that the system is a materialist, appositive and comparatively complicated ideological system for the common people and that, as Confucian thought, it reveals the truth of life from a certain aspect.Chapter II examines the literary genres of Essays and discusses its relationship with romantic literature, realist literature, symbolist literature and literature in general. The writer of the thesis contends that Zhuang Zhou is not only the universally acknowledged father of Chinese Romantic literature, but also a great pioneer of Chinese Realist literature. Further more, he is also the un-controversial first master of Chinese symbolist literature. Naturally, he enjoys a high position and inserts tremendous in influence upon Chinese literature. Consequently, his Essays can be categorized into romantic literature, realist literature and symbolist literature, with symbolist literature. It is a complex works of romanticism, realism and symbolism.Chapter ffi dwells on the literary forms of Essays and elabrates consecutively on the prose style, fu style, fictional style and its general literary style. In the writer's eye, the Essays is a rare prose of new themes, novel ideas, queer devices, deft structures, and bold and unconstrained language. It is a perfect poem, the origin of fu, the ancestor of fiction. It is also a magnificent spectacle of allegorical literature. In general , the dominated style of Essays is prose but containspoetry, fu, fiction and allegories. It is a "chaotic state" and deserves the title of the "great master " of the later forms of literature.Chapter IV devotes to the study of Essays' textual structure in 4 aspects: structural of summon, rotary structural system, flexible discourse structure and its novel structural art. The writer of the dessertation argues that there are 3 summoning layers, namely utterance, image and implication. The 3 layers are interrelated and form a summoning structure. The book is based on a spiral structure, in which the beginnings of the bodical essays correspond with the endings; whle the subordinate essays and other essays, closely related to the body, expound and support the theme and form a triple spiral structure. The flexible structure of the book constitutes pareleled structure, chained structure, climatic structure, coutinuity structure, general division structure and a combination of these structures. Furthermore, the book, in general, is loose in body and concentrating in spirit, its structural art is made up of strangeness in beginni...
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