The Study Of T'ang Chih-yen

The study of T'ang Chih-yen"T'ang Chih-yen" is a special notebook about something of imperial civil service examination system written by Wang Ting-pao, which not only recorded massively the development, state, vicissitude of the system and lots of the prose works about it, but also recorded many lifelike literature activities of the writers of the Tang and Five Dynasties. Therefore it provides abundant first-handed references for the study of the influence of the Tang Dynasty imperial examination system on the life, thoughts, association and writings of the writers then. But actually the research of the book is extremely not enough. On the one hand, the edition of the "T'ang Chih-yen" is rich and complex, which makes it hard to Clean up; On the other hand, there is nearly the blank on the research to the value of "T'ang Chih-yen", involving the history, the literature research in Tang and Five dynasties imperial civil service examination system, besides several monographs and fragmentarily discussion. This article hopes for a light attemption for slightly systematic research about "T'ang Chih-yen".Embarks from the literature bibliography angle, this article tries to find the activity research value of "T'ang Chih-yen" in saving documents of the Tang Dynasty imperial examination system and literature activity of some writers temporary. The path which follows is to reorganize the material in Wang Ting-pao's family background, the compiles characteristic, the edition spreads, the literature origin of the book also. In the article structural configuration, we use the traditional research pattern of special book. In research technique, it is primarily researched by the traditional means of combing materials, with auxiliary necessary textual research on historical evidence.The full text includes the introduction and the other six chapters of the main text. The introduction carries on the scanning-like to the documents on imperial civil service examination of the Tang Dynasty, on these base, then induces the status and the significance of "T'ang Chih-yen" approximately in the Tang Dynasty imperial civil service examination literature. At last, we will review briefly the history of the studies and the uses about "T'ang Chih-yen" aider the Song Dynasty.The first chapter discusses the family background and his whereabouts of Wang Ting-pao, the author of "T'ang Chih-yen". On the research foundations of Qian Daxin, Liu Yusong, Cen Zhongmian's results, we make an effort in studying Wang's family background and local notables to make some deduction about the relation between his family members. For example "(Wanli) newly-written Nanchang fu zhi" guaranteed surely for the close tie between Yang Xingmi and Wang Ting-pao, but the true was not in history. The time when Wang went to Hunan from Chang'an should be in tianfu first year.The second chapter analysises the members who interactd to Wang Ting-pao, considering that Wang has enough condition in writing "T'ang Chih-yen". We also question the viewpoint of Liu Yusong that the book had been ended before Zhengming third year. We think the time possibly is before or medium of Dayou period in the Southern Han Dynasty. Embarks from the original text, the article discusses the evolution from the original story in "T'ang Chih-yen" to the later generation novel. How the monograph styles of the imperial civil service examination influenced on later time was stated too. The third chapter attempts to investigated where the document of the book literature originated from. The book sources mainly are national factual record books, note, leishu and so on.The fourth and fifth chapters are specially made an appraisal on the literature value of "T'ang Chih-yen". From the literature value about imperial examination system, the article made strongly test on the first chapters of and the partial contents of the second chapter one by one, which recorded mostly historical materials about the imperial examination system in Tang Dynasty. In the value of the examination activity literature, the relationship between candidates, invigilators and influential officials and ceremony and propriety literatures of imperial examination was paid close attention to, which could be outstanding the remarkable literature value in recording society appearance, humanities custom, etc, between the lines of the book "T'ang Chih-yen".The last chapter analysises the edition situation between the hand-copied books and the block-printed ones, and how they spreaded in previous dynasties. Through making comparison between the "jiu tou" and "bai tou" edition, we believed that, so-called "jiu tou" or "bai tou" edition, only can be an important clue.