Study Of Yao Mian’s Essays

Yao Mian, a Number One Scholar in Southern Song Dynasty, is a litterateur with great achievements, especially in his essays which own a high degree of artistic value. The theory of ancient Chinese articlology is employed to analyze Yao’s essays and this paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter depicts this great litterateur’s life and friends, and especially mentions his three friends Pan Zongquan, Hu Jingyan and Shi Daocan, who are almost ignored in former study of his friends.The second chapter summarizes the main idea of Yao Mian that is reflected in his essays and his relationship with Cai Hang and Zhu Xi, both great Confucian scholars during that time. He shows great care with politics and suggests that it’s better to focus on the cultivation of the intellectuals’virtue and morality rather than his writing ability reflected in imperial examination. On account of the domestic strife and foreign agression in Southern Song Dynasty, he also advocates the doctrine of gold mean, praises men who dare to express their inner thoughts and ideas, encourages people to fortify walls around the country, and to form a militia to fight with the enemies and protect the country. Yao acknowledges Cai Hang as his teacher and is also greatly affected by Zhu Xi. Under the influence of his study of the thought of Neo-Confucianism, his essays indicate his firm belief that Confucian morals should be understood in a correct way and be defended in a strict and pious manner. From his essays, some valuable theories about poetry and essay can be picked out. For example, he claims that it’s important to concentrate on connotations when composing poems or essays.The third chapter analyzes the unique artistic features reflected in Yao’s essays. Viewpoints and ideas are clearly expounded and well organized in his political essays. His miscellanies are mainly argumentative essays which express his strong sense of reasoning and arguing. It is the typical writing style in Song Dynasty. Parallelism is preferred in his syntactic style and the sense of looseness and tightness is employed in his writing. When he depicts the landscapes in his essays, he usually adopts the "sequential method", that is talking about the coming of their names first and then their geographical features. However, the contrary way is also used by him sometimes. When it comes to epitaphs, he inclines to use the method of indirect speech, indirect depiction and argumentation. In his ode, he freely and pungently criticizes the social problems.The last chapter gives an evaluation of this great litterateur’s achievements of his essays in literary field. With elegance and purity as his main writing style and grandioseness as his peculiar writing feature, Yao stands out eminently among litterateurs in Southern Song Dynasty when the "Quotation Style"(a kind of writing style employed by litterateurs who compose the essay by quoting others’words or recording one’s own words) enjoys widespread popularity.