Yu Chu Series Anthology Study

Yu Chu was the name of the Fangshi Shilang under the rule of the emperor of Wu in Han Dynasty. His job duty was to explain strange things for the emperor of Wu at any moment. His words were written down and complied to a book called the words of Yuchu about Zhou Dynasty. During Ming and Qing Dynasty, a series of fiction anthology whose names contained the Chinese word Yuchu appeared and they gave this phrase completely new meaning.The thesis will choose Yuchu Zhi and Yuchu Xin Zhi as its main research object. The first two chapters will carry on an initial study on the edition and compiler of Yuchu Zhi, which currently causes an argument in academic circle, then analyzes the evaluation of this series of fiction anthology. Finally this thesis will explain the reason of the stylistic changing.The thesis is totally divided into four parts. The first part is edition research on Yuchu Zhi. By finding the differences among the different editions in Ming Dynasty: the edition of block-printed by RuYin; the edition of block-printed by Yuan Jiong; the editon which is kept in Tsinghua university library and the complete works of Yuchu Zhi and its continuation book, we can conclude the rough order of these block-printed editions. The second part is the research of Yuchu Zhi's complier. Nowadays about the complier, there are three different kinds of opinions in the academic circles, and they are Wu Zhongxu, Lu You and Lu Cai. From the former block-printed editions, we can make the conclusion.The third part focus on the criticism of this book. Some famous critics, such as Tang Xianzu and Yuan Hongdao, wrote the critic theories of the Yuchu Zhi. The criticism involves the thought and the artistic characteristics of Tales of marvels of Tang Danasty, and also embodies the trend of thought in the medium of Ming Danasty. The critic theory of Yuchu Xin Zhi were done by the complier, Zhang Chao. His viewpoints were not only the inheritance of critic theories in latter Ming Danasty, but also the new changes under the special environment in the early Qing Dynasty.The fourth part is the stylistics research of this series of fiction anthology. The anthology in Ming Dynasty were mainly Tales of marvels of Tang Danasty, but the anthology in Qing Dynasty were mainly contemporaneous works and the biography that were impressive. This change was caused by many factors. The continuousanthology basically hand down this mode on the style, but in the late Qing Dynasty the anthology emerged slightly, and revealed the transaction that the ancient novel was developing into the modern novel.