The Three Kingdoms Literati Theory

The Three Kingdoms period is one of the most volatile stages in the history of China,during which self consciousness and rational spirit of literators constantly strengthened while traditional Confucianism was declining.They pursued ideological emancipation and spirit freedom,so the inherent literary concepts and literary styles had gradually been broken.At that time,literary creation was very active.Cao Wei,Shu Han and Sun Wu constructed the political and cultural pattern of three kingdoms confrontation and interactive coexistence under the situation of tripartite confrontation.The living state and ideal personality of the literators in the troubled times were the research object with great literary,historical and aesthetic value.Below is a brief overview about each chapter of this paper on the literators in the Three Kingdoms period.Chapter one: the living state of literators in the Three Kingdoms period.Firstly,the research period is divided into four stages,that is,the Eastern Han Dynasty,the Three Kingdoms formation,the three tripartite confrontation and three points to jin.Secondly,the literators in the Three Kingdoms period mainly focused on writing books,reading books and giving lectures.Thirdly,due to the unrest,the geographic distribution of three literati groups had changed into Cao literati group in Wei,Liu Bei literati group in Shu and Southern literati group in Wu.Fourthly,three endings of literators in the Three Kingdoms period are reached,namely,entering the career,wandering migration,and not acquiring a peaceful end.The second chapter: A new literary trend has been spawned at the end of Han Dynasty.Cao Cao stabilized the north and promoted the talents.He and his son,who were both keen on literature,and participated in the literary creation with literators in Ye.Their works presented different styles.Cao Cao's were magnificent and energetic;Cao Pi's were graceful and elegant;Cao Zhi's were manful and rakish in the early time,while majestic and painful in the later time.The most prominent imageries in the poetry of literators in Ye are “wind” and “bird”,which respectively symbolized sad feelings in the heart and the author's ideal embodiment.The literary creation of three Caos and literator group in Ye expressed the political ideal of the intellectuals,promote the renewal of literary concept and the awakening of literators' consciousness.The third chapter: Zhu Geliang is a literator.He was not to seek fame and wealth while being a hermit;he was loyal while being an assistant minister;he was responsible while falling from power.He owned literator's the moral integrity and nobleminded character.Zhu Geliang's personality charm had mapped into his works,the narrative perspectives of which were widely with deep thought connotation,the language of which were continuous and vivid,calm and detached,the emotion of which are are graceful and charming.His works reflected the ideals of the literator and showed a peculiar temperament.The fourth chapter: “Seven sages of the bamboo grove” lived in the era of political chaos and social pain.After Zhengshi celebrities were murdered,“Seven sages of the bamboo grove” achieved the spiritual freedom due to living in seclusion and not on the official post.Seven sages made friends in the places of Shanyang former residence and Jishan villa during the time from living in Shanyang to Ji Kang murdered.The purspose of their making friends was to form a congenial literator group in the time of misfortune.Wei-Jin style made the Lao-Zhuang philosophy to be a famous discipline on account of special historical environment and fierce political struggle.This kind of literator style was expressed in the behaviours of self indulgence,debaucheries and amusing self with loud singing.The fifth chapter: in the late Eastern Han Dynasty,intelligentsia thinkers integrated Taoism into Confucian political philosophy.For example,Xiahou Xuan first proposed to compromise the contradiction between the willful nature of Taoists and the moral obligation of Confucianists;He Yan proposed to transform the traditional Confucianism with Taoistic inaction thought.Wang Bi's bold reform made the system info of Zhengshi metaphysics accomplished.From the macro perspective,Zhengshi poets also included “Seven sages of the bamboo grove”,whose representatives are Ruan Ji and Ji Kang.Ruan Ji's transcendence of reality and Ji Kang's transcendence of soul promoted the outside-to-in spirit direction in that period.The sixth chapter: the development of Shu literature were relatively weak in the Three Kingdoms period.The characteristics of Shu literature are single literary form and rustic style.Jingzhou literary Group,formed in late Eastern Han Dynasty,whose literary works were filled with sentimental feelings of dispersal literators.Wu literature has three features.One is the diverse literary style.Four Poems and Tiwu Fu had been developed with Confucianism as destination.Next is the regional characteristics.Jiangdong aristocratic family was the important promoter of Wu literature.Last feature is the rustic style.The relative conservation more focused on the interpretation of the traditional culture.The seventh chapter: in the period full of changes and disputes,the literati groups in the Three Kingdoms period and their literary creations are often different in the spiritual features and aesthetic orientation according to regional disparity.At the same time,there existed a two-way interactive relationship between regional literature and political culture.On the one hand,politics influenced literature,reflected in the betrayal to the Confucian classics by Ruying,the representative of the local senior officials group;on the other hand,although the regional culture is suppressed,it still impacted on the mainstream culture as a tributary.The eighth chapter: this chapter will be developed from two aspects.Firstly,the literators in the Three Kingdoms period influenced the aesthetic spirit of the later literature.It mainly manifested as the influence of aesthetic implication of “seclusion” on later literary artistic conception,“strength of character” contributing to the strong and desolated style of the later literature,“emotion” affecting the ways of later literators' feelings expressed.Secondly,the literators during the Three Kingdoms period were not only as historical images,but also as literary images existing in the later works.