Disasters Written In Pre-qin Dynasty Literary Works

Since the birth of literature, it built a close relationship with disasters. Literature not only records and reflects the reality, but also the natural disasters. Among all the literary works, those who in pre-Qin dynasty were the first to record disasters, and their contents, structures, languages and other aspects deeply affected the following ones. Therefore, studying those disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty and investigating literary characteristics and cultural values not only promote the exploration of literary history on disasters, but also propel the innovation and development of similar literary woks concerning disasters in contemporary era.This thesis consists of four parts. The first part is about the general description of natural disasters in pre-Qin dynasty literary works so as to summarize different kinds of disasters. First, it mainly focuses on three genres and four kinds of disasters, and generally investigates into the recordings of disasters. Then, in order to explore the emotion of its literary significance, it chooses one typical disaster——fire. From the general description to the concrete analysis, it proves that the appearance of disasters in pre-Qin dynasty works is by no means fortuitous.The second part is about the literary characteristics of disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty literary works. This part is analyzed with three artistic approaches——motifs, images and concrete artistic means, which offer further understandings on this topic. Firstly, disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty literary works create the corresponding motif, and they also provide other motifs for the later periods such as flood, drought and so on. Secondly, bad grasses, owl mice, insects, birds, water and fire are endowed with symbolic meanings, thus making them become the disaster images and enrich the contents of literary works. Thirdly, the adoption of writing styles such as documentary, imagination, narrative, argument, description, lyric make disaster description holding the literary characteristics. Under the premise of the in-depth analysis, the classic disaster literary work——the Book of Odes is chosen as a case. It turns out that although disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty literary works including the general characteristics, different works have their unique aspects.The third part is about the cultural characteristics of disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty literary works. Those works not only focus on disasters, but also reflect the inner relationship between literature and culture. Works of this period clearly show the variation of the ethnic culture. That is to say, primitive religious belief represents the fear of disasters, rites of Zhou dynasty represent the prevention of disasters by means of worship, and philosophical thinking means the awareness of relief. This vertical chain becomes the clue of the development of disaster ideas.The last part is about the influence of disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty literary works. It mainly analyses the effects of genres, creation psychology and artistic means on literary works in later periods. At the same time, the leading position occupied by disasters written in pre-Qin dynasty literary works becomes the focal point of this chapter.