The Family Ethic And A New Change Of The Literature In Wei-jin Period

In this paper, the new change of the family ethic in Wei-Jin period and its influence on literature are made as the research core. There are five parts mainly.The introduction part briefly discusses the close connection between the family ethics and literature in the Chinese "ethical culture" Then the theme is leaded, and the present research situation of the family and literature is teased. This can lay the foundation for the further research, find out the direction, and give a brief description of the research ideas.The first chapter, the relationship between father and son, the new variable of the ethics about loyalty and filial piety and their influence on literature in Han-Jin period are discussed.The policy of filial rule was continued in Han-Jin period, and the filial piety had become a fairly common practice in the whole society. But the relationship between father and son was essentially different. In Han Dynasty, the father had high moral consciousness. They brought the sense of responsibility about maintaining the social education back to their family, and the role of father in a family was substituted by the social role. Propriety was more important than emotion in the relationship between father and son. In Wei-Jin period, fathers came back home. They alienated the social morality, and treated their sons with family love. Emotion was more important than propriety in the relationship between father and son. In Han Dynasty, people obeyed the etiquette when showing filial piety, and implemented long mourning and lavish burial to win filial fame, but eventually fell into false. In Wei-Jin period, the connotation of filial piety had been turned from valuing propriety to valuing emotion. The lavish burial was replaced by filial support. Finally, the crazy state of pseudo filial piety in Han Dynasty was broken. Since the pre-Qin period, loyalty and filial piety had tangled. Before the Western Han Dynasty, both loyalty and filial piety were acceptable, people could take their will. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, loyalty went ahead of filial piety and people tried their best to show loyalty. Till Wei-Jin period, the sense of filial piety ahead of loyalty had formed. The official selecting system and the disaster of partisan prohibitions in Han Dynasty had been a blow to the scholars and digested their loyalty to the imperial court. They returned to their family from the society. In the turmoil, scholars completed their individual consciousness and found their own deep emotion. When the social morality was stripped and the relationship between father and son was examined by the pure emotion, the natural family love must trump the respect meaning which was added by the society. So, filial piety had been ahead of loyalty. The development of the relationship between father and son in Wei-Jin period had effected the literature. It facilitated the prosperity of literature on extolling ancestors in Wei-in period, the evolution from country to family of the contents of the literature on the commandment to sons and the rise of literature on parents and children. Ji Shao’s death for Jin royalty was actually the practice of Ji Kang’s thought. It couldn’t be regarded as loyalty but not filial.The second chapter, the development of relationship of the couples in Han-Jin period and the interaction between it and literature are discussed.After the Confucianism Only in the Western Han Dynasty, rules of three cardinal guides and five constant virtues were established gradually. It restricted the relationship of couples increasingly tight. Etiquette, reputation and filial piety were often put above the couple ethics. They lied between husband and wife and the relationship of the couples in Han Dynasty was cold and lack of vitality. In Cao-Wei period, some ethical code slackened and the general mood of society was dissolute. The beauty was regarded as the most important thing in the society. Woman became a plaything of man. They relied on their beauty to win man’s favor, and lost the favor with their beauty’s withering away. There wasn’t true love between husband and wife at all. In the period of Jin, the general mood of women’s life opened further and women had slipped the leash of ethical code. They got the same position as men in the family and society and no longer looked up to their husbands. Then the general mood of envy prevailed because of trying to safeguard their status in marriage. In the period of Jin, people pursued freedom of marriage and can-match standard in marital choice. The couples got along with equality, harmony and fun. Resonance between two lovers and immersing in love were contained in their ordinary life. There was no ethical restrictions but chastity preserving. In Wei-Jin period, because of the slackness of ethical code, the ethos deterioration and the prejudice of feminine virtues, the bandwagon of calling the ethic had been set off to save the disadvantage at that time. While the sentiment in the relationship of husband and wife became increasingly prominent, the emotion of the literature works had also changed. In Jin period, the relationship between the couples had turn to loving each other harmoniously and steadily from the wife’s forbearance and surrender and the husband’s swagger in Han Dynasty and the wife’s misgivings of abandonment by their beauty’s withering away and the husband’s abandoning the old for the new in Cao-Wei period. The new style and features of marriage in Wei-Jin period were amazing and the stories of jealous woman and deep love between the couples had been the subject sources of the novels of recording people. They had profound implications on the later novels and dramas together. The couple’s relationship of Pan Yue was typical in Wei-Jin period. Being influenced by the metaphysics thought such as valuing the life itself, conforming to nature, transcending the ethic code and Indulging the emotion, the Pans alienated the ethical code and showed their pure emotion of love. Pan Yue’s elegiac poems had presented a unique feature. The works had weak momentum and paid more attention to his own feelings. It embodied the typical characters of poems in the Western Jin Dynasty. The pursuit of depicting small spaces and images and the integration of describing things and showing emotion in Pan Yue’s writings had shown the new change of the art of poetry and suggested the trajectory from the form of the poetry in Han-Wei period to the poetry style between Qi and Liang Dynasty.The third chapter, the relationship of brothers and literature are discussed.When people were in danger, only brothers could succor. After turmoil, friends were better than brothers. From the pre-Qin to Wei-Jin, there were two kinds of emotion tendency in the relationship of brothers and each had its characteristics of the times. In the pre-Qin period, the relationship of brothers began to extend and transform to the social ethics gradually but alienated in families. In the early Han Dynasty, the disadvantages from Qin continued. Brothers fought for the property and the relationship of brothers were bad. Then the relationship of brothers became closer under the influence and enlightenment of Confucianism. But it began to be affected, extreme and hypocritical because of the instigation of the atmosphere of advocating fame. In We-Jin period, because power, wealth and so on were pursued between brothers, there were still fight in their relationship. But on the whole, the atmosphere was harmonious and happy. Brothers supported ea ch other and deeply attached to each other because of the true feeling. It was a bright in the troubled times. It might not be at daggers drawn tensely between Cao Zhi and Cao Pi. The story that Cao Pi persecuted Cao Zhi was coined in the book Wei Lue. The literature style of Cao Zhi should be divided into three stages, Jian’an period, the 22nd year of Jian’an period to the 4th year of Huangchu period and Huangchu and Taihe period. The styles were similar in the first and last stages, but it presented desolate and plaintive in the second period. That was mainly because of the pressure from the family misfortune, the attack of the death of relatives and friends and the false accusation from base persons.The forth chapter, some relevant issues about the ethic in Wei-Jin period were supplemented.In Wei-Jin period, mothers took the main responsibility of family education. Many scholars didn’t have the teaching from their fathers’ when they were very young and became talents because of their mothers’educated. That is a very prominent historical phenomenon. Investigating the reasons, the historical factors such as the fading of the official school in Wei-Jin period, the absence of male education, the enhancement of female’s culture attainment and so on pushed women to the front and made them have a unique contribution to the family education. Then the phenomenon of mother educating was brought up.Looking back on the evolution of ethic from the literature in Han-Jin period, we can find that the focus of the ethic in Han-Jin period had experienced a transfer from country to home and then to people. In terms of the thought of five ethic codes, it was a transfer from monarch and his subjects to friends and then to father and son in families. The study on the family ethic and literature in Wei-Jin period has just started. There is a lot of work to be done. Especially to the whole research of the ancient literature, that’s exactly true.