Research On Zhang Dai's Prose's Arts

Zhangdai, a famous litterateur, essayist and historian in Chinese history, was born in a prominent family of the Late-Ming & Early-Qing Dynasty. In a political family with plentiful cultural atmosphere, he grew up into a versatile literary giant with broad vision.Even though Zhangdai was well-known as a historian, his essays also had great literary and aesthetic value. Especially, his art essays were diverse with distinguishing achievements and full with deep human care and typical characteristics. Under his vivid description, the characters in his articles took on different roles and demonstrated the historic vision of the society at his time, attracting current readers with great rational and aesthetic charms. From the points of contents, language, and writing styles and structures which are much different from modern prose now, Zhangdai's prose promoted the diversity of prose and worth studying carefully indeed. His essays showed us the common characteristics of traditional Chinese writing style, and represented the high level of organizing contents into a full article. All his essays have great historic values, which pushes us to probe deeply into long-history culture of ancient China.Just like the famous painting named by'Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival', Zhangdai's short essays objectively showed us with different aspects of the social customs and habits of the Late-Ming Dynasty. Compile with different writing styles, Zhangdai was a broad-minded writer to adopt others'good experiences into his own writing activities. After combining the experiences and styles of Gong-An Group and those of Jin-Ling Group, he tried to form his own writing style following the style of SimaQian, a famous historian in ancient China. Zhangdai added human care and man elements into his paintings of mountains arid rivers, which showed a big 'Man' in all his works and in the end solidify his status in painting. The characters in his works were promised to be equal and from daily life, which was strictly recorded as it was without any distortion. Real for everything is one of the most important advantages of his paintings which is in turn regarded as historical materials for current research.As the first spring of short essay in ancient China, Late-Ming Dynasty demonstrated its own characteristic:Short essay initially followed the style of the professional historical writing method represented by SimaQian, but tried to gain the domain role among all the essays. During this uprising process, Zhangdai was believed to be the director and main contributor. For short, Zhangdai not only inherited but also exceeded SimaQian as to the essay writing and style innovation.This article is divided into five parts:The first part introduces Zhangdai's resume, achievements and prose type; The second part is focused on Zhangdai's landscapes with emphasis on the human care and character; The third section analyzes the characteristics of different characters in his paintings and articles involved with human equality, the characters'diversity,and legendary and writing methods; The forth is analyzes the life in knowledges in prose;he The fifth one is set as prose aesthetic part, refined and popular tastes blending, honestly recording methods.Study on Zhangdai's Prose flourished in the May Fourth period of early modern China for an extremely short time, and then almost nobody took it seriously until the 80's of the 20th century. With the'Reform and Opening Policy' swinging across China mainland, Zhangdai's prose and essays attract youths at that time thanks to his short form and concise writing styles which keeps the pace of modern life exactly. Since then, Zhangdai became a hot word in culture of new era sparking the insight and thinking of young men.A list of books are focused on Zhangdai's prose and essays, such as Zhangdai and His'Tao-An Dream Recollection'&'West-Lake Dreams'by Xia Xianchun, Characteristics of Zhang Dai's Prose by Jiang Guangdou, Natural Sounds --- Prose Style Discussion of Zhangdai's and His'Tao-An Dream Recollection'&'West-Lake Dreams by Hu Guanying, Concise but Wonderful Prose Writing of Zhangdai's Zhangdai and His'Tao-An Dream Recollection'&'West-Lake Dreams by Huang Hui, and Short Discussion of Aesthetic Qualities of Zhangdai's'Tao-An Dream Recollection'by Xu Weiquan.Research on Zhangdai's prose and essays enters into another climax due to its distinct styles from traditional prose. Zhangdai's prose contributes to the diversity of modern prose dramatically. Whether traditional rational or perceptual essays in form, modern essays authors should learn from and develop Zhangdai's prose from the point of styles and contents, delivering the best human feeling of modern society in 21st century.