Confucius' Disciple The Evolution Of The Image In The Qin And Han

The Analects is a work of quotation, which mainly records the speeches and actions of Confucius and some of his disciples. Strictly speaking, The Analects is not a pure literary work, but only a quotation work of persuasive articles. However, nobody can deny the fact that is has its literary value, and that it exerts far-reaching influence on literature of later generations.One of the embodiments of the work is that it is good at presenting the characters through the description of their facial expression and language. In it, Confucius is the focus of the book, who is praised by Liu Xie in Wen Xin Diao Long ?Zheng Sheng as "a Confucian scholar personality and disposition are to be seen in his analects". Apart from this, the disciples of his, such as Zilu, Zigong, Yanhui, Ranyou and so on, also have their unique characters. The description that Zilu is straightforward and simple, sometimes nearly bold; Zigong is clever, witty, good at speech and business affairs; Yanhui is willing to suffer poverty while adhering to his moral values, gentle and virtuous; Zengxi is natural and unrestrained leave people very deep impressions.Apart from The Analects, there are still many records of Confucius disciples in the other literary works of pre-Qin, Xi Han and Dong Han periods. Yet owing to the differences of the author's subjective knowledge, of the writing purposes and the genres of the works, the characters of Confucius disciples created are sometimes similar to those described in The Analects, Sometimes even totally different. During the time, the images of these characters have been changed or developed so that each of them has their own individuality that is nearly perfect.This thesis chooses the representatives among the disciples of Confucius-Yanhui, Zilu and Zigong as the objects. Taking these characters from The Analects, it aims at the revelation of the recreation of the three characters and their evolution process through the comparison between what has been described about them in The Analects and the records about them in the pre-Qin, Xi Han and Dong Han literary works such as Zhuang Zi, Zuo Zhuan, Han Shi Wai Zhuan, Shi Ji and Shuo Yuan.The thesis comprises three parts: the first part is the analysis of the archetype of the three characters provided in The Analects; the second part is the analysis of the recreation of them three in the other pre-Qin, Xi Han and Dong Han literary works; the third part is the summary of the tendency of the evolution of the characters images.