The Research On The Chinese Ancient Epitaphs

This paper tries to straighten out the whole development of Chinese ancient epitaphs , describes the main changes in its contents and its characteristic of literature based on extant literature of Chinese ancient epitaphs. The most exemplary masters and their works in different period are given specific focus since they can reflect the fetures of the times. The main research methods used in this paper is longitudinal comparisons, and the author also pays enough attention to key points as well. This paper consists of 3 chapters.Chapter one is "the source and formation of epitaphs" and the period is from pre-Qin to Sui Dynasty. This chapter focues on the epitaphs in formative period and describes the evolution of this style of writing from a very simple,practical writing to a parallel prose which seemed to reach the extreme beauty in form by increasing its literary flavours. The author describes the characteristic of epitaphs in different stages as well as the development clue of them.Chapter 2 is the most important part of this article. In this chapter, the evolution of epitaphs from Tang Dynasty to Song Dynasty are discussed. The epitaphs was freed from parallelism in Tang Dynasty and the contents shifted to the portrayal of ordinary people from the praise and eulogy for grand people. The free epitaphs got the dominant position in the middle and late Tang Dynasty and ushered in a period of prosperity in Song Dynasty. The establishment and perfection of epitaphs in literal prose form indicated that the epitaph writing became mature. The creation of many masters during Song Dynasty provided impetus to epitaph writing. The production of epitaphs made an unprecedented achievements in this period. The studies of predecessors on epitaphs usually gave more attention to Tang Dynasty and paid less attention to the exploration of the whole Song Dynasty. However, there are many exellent works of epitaphs in Song Dynasty and the quality of epitaphs in this time is the best. So enough attention should be given to Song Dynasty as well as to Tang Dynasty. Chapter 3 describes the decline of epitaphs from Yuan Dynasty to Qing Dynasty though a large quantity of epitaphs were created but there were not many good works among them. Comparing to other parts of this article, this part is brief.