Leishijun Research

Lei Shijun is a well-known classical writer in Yangzhou region during the dynasty of Ming and Qing. Though having encountered many ups and downs during his life, he keeps his literati integrity and unrestrained character. He loves making friends and traveling. His profound classical writing skill, which incorporates the essence of classics, science and history, is well known and highly evaluated in Huaihe area. He studies poetry from LiYi in Xinghua, and also keeps his own genres. Lei Shijun, as an adherent, devotes himself to writing, and has composed "Ai Ling Essays" and "Ai Ling Poems" and so on. His ancient essays and poems are rich in contents and diverse in genres with a lot of progressive thoughts and times spirits conveyed in it. However, due to various reasons, the academic field has rarely concerned about him. This paper, with Lei Shijun as the study object, does a comprehensive research on his life, family, literary thought, poetry creation as well as friendship-building based on existing materials.This paper consists of three chapters and two appendixes.Chapter One is an overview to Lei Shijun’s life and family. Based on related materials, this chapter provides an overview to Lei Shijun’s family and some family members, which would show the influence of family on his character and literary creation. Lei Shijun’s life experiences and works spreading status are also included in this chapter.Chapter Two is an analysis to Lei Shijun’s literary thoughts. His classical writing and poetic thoughts are explored respectively. In order to highlight his unique point of view and value, his literary thoughts are compared horizontally with others under the literary background in late Ming and early Qing dynasty, and also compared vertically under the literary history.Chapter Three is a discussion on Lei’s poetry creation based on Chapter Two. It could be found from Volumn16of "Ai Ling Essays" and Volumn2of "Ai Ling Poems" that Lei’s poems are diverse in genres and rich in contents. His classical writing is discussed from two perspectives, firstly on stylistic classification, secondly on classical writing features by ignoring the stylistic boundaries. As for poetry, it is discussed based on ideological contents. Also the relationship between literary theory and writing practice are covered.Appendix one is Lei Shijun chronology. Based on collected materials, Lei’s chronological life is listed, and this would, hopefully, benefit future studies. Appendix two is a list on Lei Shijun’s friendship-building. Lei’s friends are listed in a table, including their lives, works and scenes reflected in Lei’s works.