Ancient Chinese Female Consciousness--From The Primitive To Confucian Ritualism

From the view of culturology, this thesis analyses the female consciousness of ancient Chinese women. It mainly explores the female consciousness of the primitive women, women of The Book Of Poems and women of Han Dynasty. It tries to reveal the development of ancient Chinese female consciousness, from the primitive to Confucian ritualism.The thesis consists of five chapters, that is the foreword, the main body of the thesis, and the concluding chapter.The foreword expounds the value, purpose of the subject ,and methods used. This chapter makes it clear that the thesis is the culturological study of female consciousness of ancient Chinese women, taking literature as the indispensable part of the culture.The first chapter analyses the characteristics of primitive Chinese women. The analysis covers the female consciousness of the ancient mythology, the female consciousness reflected in the archaeological discovers, and the female consciousness embodied in the written Chinese language. The characteristics of primitive female consciousness can be concluded as the primitiveness of female, the natural authority, maternal love, motherly affection, constant heroic deeds for the group, and the daring unselfishness.The second chapter analyses the social and cultural background of The Book Of Poems, the influence of Zhou ritualism on The Book Of Poems,and the constraining of the natural female consciousness in the relationship between male and female.The third chapter expounds women's value positioning under natural and social expect. "Suitability for the family" is the most important role that the society in Zhou Dynasty placed on women.Women's imploring pursuit for love in the families had already showed the influence of Confucian ritualism.The fourth chapter analyes the ritualized primitive female comsciousness of the age of The Book Of Poems.Starting from the female consciousness under feudal female virtues, women's aesthetic consciousness and the female in the eyes of the male,it summarizes thechange of female consciousness from the primitive to Confucian ritualism.The fifth chapter analyses the distorted female consciousness under Confucian ritualism. Above all, this chapter explores the female consciousness of Pre-Qin, which had great influence over the Confucian ritualism of Han dynasty, including Confucious view on women , The Book Of Changes and Taoist school. Then it explores the further distorting on female consciousness of the Confucian ritualism in Han dynasty, and also expounds women images reflected in the important literary works of Han dynasty, such as Nineteen Ancient Poems, folk songs of Music Bureau of Han dynasty. The female consciousness in Han dynasty had lost the primitiveness of the primitive time, and the contradiction between the free spirit and Confucian ritualism embodied in the female consciousness of the age of The Book Of Poems resulted in the victory of Confucian ritualism in Han dynasty. In Han dynasty, the primitive female consciousness came to its end and the feudal women virtues became formed. After Han dynasty, the female consciousness of ancient Chinese women became totally distorted under the restraint of Confucian ritualism.The concluding chapter summarizes the above chapters, generalizing the history of the female consciousness of ancient Chinese women from primitive time to feudal society and the families. It concludes that there is no impassable gap between male and female, humankind can only survive and prosper with both sexes. The thesis affirms the positive effect of raising female consciousness to the thorough liberation of women, and offers deep thoughts to the female consciousness of modern time and the women's liberation.The theories raised in my tutor Professor Gao Kaizheng's academic work, Culturological explanation of Ancient Chinese art, is the guideline of the thesis. From the view of culturology, exploring the history of ancient Chinese female consciousness and understanding wholly the meaning of ancient art of China are the purpose of this thesis...