A Study of the Writers of Songjiang Prefecture in Ming Dynasty

The Songjiang Prefecture in Ming Dynasty is one of the important economical towns in the southern area of Yangtze, where a lot of excellent persons cropped up and made their contributions to science and culture, including literature and arts. This thesis tries to take these men of letters appeared in Songjiang Prefecture as the research objects and makes an investigation and research on them, whose life and literary works are taken into consideration, with the purpose of describing the general features and local characteristics of the literature in Songjiang within almost 300 years in Ming Dynasty.By making a survey of various historical documents, including the history of local places and the books of family genealogy, it has found that there are in all 125 writers with their anthologies in Ming Dynasty, appearing in 29 other collections nowadays. Then this thesis observes and investigates the lives of these writers and their works on the basis of the first handed information. Two parts—Preface and Introduction—appears before the main text, the former mainly narrates "the status of present research both at home and abroad", and "the research object and approaches as well as the innovative points"; while the latter states "the historical evolution of Songjiang" and "the economy and culture of Songjiang Prefecture in Ming Dynasty", and also makes a generalization of these writers mentioned above. The main text observes the writes one by one in sequential order at first, and then introduces the writers within the period form Hong Wu to Cheng Hua (The years name after the name of the emperors) in the first part. As the great political innovation has taken place, there are few writers, mainly including Yuan Kai, Guang Ne, Zhu Fu and Gu Lu, etc., in this span. The second part introduces the writers within the period from Hong Zhi to Zheng De (ibid). With the development on economy and culture, some well-known writers such as Lu Shen, Qian Fu, Zhang Bi,Gu Qing and Tang Jin began to display their personalities and features in their works.The third part introduces the writers within the period from Jia Jing to Long Qing (ibid). After a long time accumulation, the literature of Songjiang Prefecture won its blooming period and different types of writers and works come out and show their own various creative styles. These main writers included Lu Shusheng, Xu Jie, Pan En, Mo Ruzhong, He Liangjun, Zhu Bangxian,Zhu Dashao, Xu Xian Zhong, Zhang Zhixiang, Dong Yiyang, etc. The fourth part introduces the writers in the period of Wan Li (ibid). During the most active moment in Ming Dynasty and the most exuberant period of Songjiang Prefecture, some main writes come out, such as Chen Jiru, Song Maocheng, Dong Qichang, Xu Guangqi,Mo Shi long, Tang Wenxian and Chen Suoyun etc. The fifth part introduces the writers within in the period from Tai Chang and Tian Qi to Chong Zhen. During the more than 20 years, the political change and...