The History And The Manners Of The Six Dynasties

A New Account of the Tales of the World (Shi-Shuo Xin Yu) is the most important work with which to understand Wei-Jin (220-581) demeanor, study Wei-Jin metaphysics and explore the unique social and life style in Wei-Jin period. The work became more easy to understand and more readable since it had been studied and collated by Liu Pansui in1928with the Jiaqutang version of Ming dynasty (1368-1644) as master copy. In the preface of the thesis, the author, through retrospection to the academic study history on A New Account of the Tales of the World, believes that though enormous previous study had been done on this work, it is still a open field to study the inheritance and evolution of historiography and the transfer and features of pubic morals in Wei-Jin period in terms of the relation between historiography and time.The thesis consists of the preface, and chapter Ⅰ&Ⅱ. Chapter1is a general introduction, in which the author presents the viewports i n term of the literary genre, mainly based on the analysis, induction and synthesize on the relationships among the writing style, the commentary features of the book as well as the traditional classic works, historical works and philosophical works, that the main text of A New Account of the Tales of the World is short stories, while the Liu Xiaobiao’s (刘孝标) commentary on the work are historical facts. The author also point out that A New Account of the Tales of the World by no mean tells the totally authentic historical facts, instead, stories without proof or improperly described can be frequently found in it. Nevertheless, the work brings a genuine impression and feeling of Wei-Jin Period to the readers. And the commentary notes on the work have always been together with the main text since they were added to the book by Liu Xiaobiao. If considering the commentary notes of Liu Xiaobiao in a macro background of Wei-Jin historiography, we will find that it is a important historical chain for the emergence of New Account of the Tales of the World in Wei-Jin period, Liu Xiaobiao’s commentary on the work as well as the great attention and likeness people paid on the book, reflecting the reorganization on the independent thoughts presented in forms of short stories by the people in Wei-Jin Period, their understanding on the fabrication in the stories and efforts to historical facts proving stories based on the full understanding of the fictional and factual narration style of short stories. Chapter I is not only a general introduction to the thesis, but also the guideline ideology for the concrete study on detailed cases in chapter Ⅱ.Chapter11engages in detailed analysis. As the famous saying goes "Literary styles will be changed according to the public morals, chapter1describes "literary styles" and chapter II focus on "public morals Regarding the huge amount of works on public morals in Wei-Jin Period, the author, specially selects three individual cases:life outlook, view on women and language and speech in Wei-Jin Period to prove the authentic time spirit correctly conveyed by New Account of the Tales of the World, by the method of historical facts proving stories based on the materials in the book as short stories. In addition, with reference to Liu Xiaobiao’s(刘孝标)commentary on the work, the author proves that the emergence of New Account of the Tales of the World with commentary signifies resourceful and reliable notes for the " History of spirit" of New Account of the Tales of the World, instead of emphasizing its supernatural and the fantastic features—one will easy to see the spirit conveyed in the book is realistic and by no means nonsense.As a short stories collection, New Account of the Tales of the World is an excellent sample of the "history of spirit" for the scholars of that period. Liu Xiaobiao’s commentary on the work proves the illusion of spirit history with detailed historical facts. New Account of the Tales of the World witth Liu Xiaobiao’s commentary stands a extremely high status in Chinese literature and cultural history for it conveys the sprits of the people in Wei-Jin Period in most proper and vivid way, however, we gradually neglect the fact that this "proper" and "vivid" factures were jointly created by two authors who are in different generations with dozens of years apart. The author, therefore, indicates this viewpoint neglected by us and aims to provide reference to those who engage in the study of historiography and literature history of Wei-Jin Period.