"Huayang Guozhi" On The Draft

The Records of State-Huayang was written by Chang Qu of the Eastern Jin Dynasty,recording the history, geography, characters, etc. of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou Province andsome areas of Gansu, Shaanxi and Hubei Province at the Middle of the4th Century BC. It wasthe first chorography book in our country which has a comparative complete style. As an earlyhistorical chorography book of Southwest of China, it not only has high historical value, butalso has literariness. This thesis attempts to make an analysis of The Records of State-Huayangfrom the viewpoint of literature and culture.Based on the present situation that there are insufficient papers studying The Records ofState-Huayang from an overall perspective in the academic field, this thesis aims to explore thisbook from the aspects of literature and culture. It focuses on the literary achievements andvalues of the book. Setting the book in the background of the development of biographicalliterature, this thesis tries to further understand it, to fully explore its significance in the historyof literature, to reveal its unique aesthetic connotation and make up people’s insufficientknowledge about its literary significance for a long time. It analyzes the book from heritage offamily Chang Qu, his writing background, writing origin, narrative features, character portrayal,and its historical status and effects on later generations, etc. It also highlights thegroundbreaking significance of this book as the early chorography.First of all, the thesis makes an in-depth tracing and research about Chang family, whichaims to clarify the context and determine the lineage, to further explore heritage of family ofChang Qu and its influence on him, to appraise a character based on the historical backgroundand to clear background and thought origins of Chang Qu. It further clarifiesthe creation process of The Records of State-Huayang written by Chang Qu on the basis ofprevious studies and discusses the book from the social background, academic style and lifeexperiences, etc. And it especially pays attention to its inheritance and reference from the worksof predecessors.Secondly, the thesis further investigates the origin of writing The Records ofState-Huayang. Having served as official historian of Han Dynasty for a long time, Chang Quhas the responsibility to write the prosperity and turbulence of society and men with virtue or impiety. Besides, there are not too many records about the southwest in historical literature andmost of them are not true. Based on this, Chang Qu decides to write to fill up the insufficiencyof history. Especially his records about the history of the Southwest in Datong Period areenough to fill in the official history. After surrender to Jin, the old ministers of Cheng Hanregime revolted and were murdered. Chang Qu was also very easy to be suspected. Therefore,one of his reasons of writing the book is to express his loyalty to Jin Dynasty. Meanwhile, hewas disregarded and expelled by the Jiangdong people. Feeling depressed, he also wants tooverwhelm Jiangdong with the plentiful talents and products of the three states of Liang, Yi andNing.Thirdly, the narrative art in The Records of State-Huayang is the top priority of the thesis.The author tries to explain from the two seemingly contradictory narrativeattitudes, various narrative techniques, narrative features and titles, etc. In terms of narrativefeatures, the book includes a large number of songs, poetry, proverbs, myths, legends, folkwaysand customs. It also uses divination to compile the content which is full of strong emotionalexperience of individuals and evaluation. This thesis tries to develop from the perspectivesof literature and culture successively and combine the cultural background of Wei and JinDynasties to interpret its narrative characteristics.In addition, the portrayal of characters is one part that cannot be ignored. The thesis mainlyexplains it from the character description style, character classification, characterizationtechniques, etc. It aims to highlight its creativity and features in portraying characters. Praiseand catalogue styles are the focuses of analysis.Finally, this thesis discusses the pioneering significance of The Records of State-Huayangin the history of chorography, its historical and literary achievements and influence on laterhistory books.