A Study On Chengshi (Textual Patterns) Of The Eight-Part Essays In Ming And Qing Dynasties

The study of Chengshi in ancient Chinese has long been established, with its basic meaning of "model" or "special pattern". The Eight-part essays have formed relatively rigid "Chengshi" during hundreds of years from Ming to Qing Dynasties. The Chengshi of Eight-part essays mainly refers to the textual patterns or models of essay writing, which focuses on the up-down dominances from Pian (passage) to Zhang (paragraph); Zhang (paragraph) to Gu (couplet); Gu (couplet) to Ju (sentence); Ju (sentence) to Zi (character) and the semantic or logic connection within every linguistic unit. The essence of Chengshi of the Eight-part essays is the achievement of coherent and cadenced compositions which best interpret the ancient Classics and observe the semantic and logic displines of characters, sentences, couplets, paragraphs and passages. Since there are different versions or sayings in ancient time about the textual patterns of Eight-part essays except Chengshi, such as Ge, Shi, Geshi, Wenfa (different from the western concept "Grammar"), Jifa, it is necessary to take a general view of all of them to make the research realistic historically.Among the many suggestions of the origin of the Eight-part essays are concerned, the more accetable would be Lun (argumentative essays) in ancient essay writing as the source and Lu-Fu of the Tang dynasty as the immediate source by the criterion of the formation of Chengshi. Chengshi formed in Eight-part essays best combines the textual patterns of Lun (argumentative essays), which resulted in the demanding restriction in almost every aspect of the Eight-part essays. Whatever the comments of the Chengshi in Eight-part essays would be, no one can deny the usefulness for the beginners to organize their ideas into writing. Among the ancient literatures on Eight-part essays, Gui Zhenchuan’s Opinion about the Principles of writings by Gui Youguang, Random Ideas of Imperial tests by Wu Zhiwang and Yigai by liu Xizai are comprehensive and systematic about the Chengshi in Eight-part essays.The analyses of Chengshi in Eight-part essays consist of three parts:topic examination and theme settlement; the structure from the whole piece, paragraphs, sentences down to the characters; Qi-Cheng-Zhuan-He (introduction, elucidation, transition and summing up). For one thing, the Eight-part essays place emphasis on the transformation of different parts and the coherent expression of the doctrines, which are the best summary of the ancient writing studies in the light of textual patterns; For another, the three aspects can express clearly how to plan the writing, and planning is a field worthy of extensive study but the research has not drawn enough scholarly attention in current China.What’s more, the contrastive studies of Chengshi in Eight-part essays and Western informal logic will be meaningful, although entirely fresh, to get the objective and new insights into the logic and philosophic concepts hidden in the writings for better understanding of the uniqueness and richness implied in Chinese culture.In addition, Chengshi in Eight-part essays can be applied to aesthetic and pedagogic fields. Since Chengshi in Eight-part essays by no means comes from nowhere, many art forms in ancient China, like calligraphy, painting, architectures, have the same Chengshi such as:topic examining and theme settled for the whole; the forming of different parts for the theme. So it is unavoidable that meaningful and deliberate planning of different parts to from a whole would turn out aesthetic models to be followed by. The modern meaning of Chengshi in Eight-part essays lies in its textual patterns and pedagogic meaning in modern writing:it offered a much more easier, but efficient and effective way to teach students to get the enlightenment of Chinese characters and thus to gain a holistic idea and real comprehension of characters, sentences, couplets, paragraphs and passages.