A Study On The Stories Of A Chinese Filial Piety Woman In The Donghai Area

This article includes the motives and types of the stories about a Chinese filial piety woman in the Donghai area by using the method of morphological study of folktale and narratology, systematically presents many different texts about all kinds of literary forms, sums up and extracts the commonly used motives and core motives. And on this basis, it also analyzes these stories’ narrative patterns with the same classification criterion. Finally, it investigates thoroughly these stories’ increasingly hidden narrative motivation and cultural connotation. This dissertation includes three chapters with an introduction at the beginning and a conclusion at the end.The introduction sketches out the research history and recent advance of the stories about a Chinese filial piety woman in the Donghai area, and explains the significance of this subject, the goals, theories and methodologies, and the material resources of this research. At the end of it, some terminological definitions and restrictions are given to several related concepts.Chapter one determines10commonly used motives and two predominant types of the stories about a Chinese filial piety woman in the Donghai area, and elaborates the significance of motif study to the classification of narrative patterns and text types.Chapter two divides both the types of stories into a three-part structure about the begining, middle,and end of the plot basing on the classification criterion of the leading character’s action. Then analyzes the stories’basic forms of expression and narrative patterns concretely combining with the core motives in the three stages of stories. And aiming at expounding in a clean and straightforward manner, the graphical method is repeatedly applied in this chapter,which is also one of the most commonly used methods in this research.With the stories’ uninterrupted spreading over two thousand years,chapter three quests for the hidden narrative motivation and cultural intention of the stories about a Chinese filial piety woman in the Donghai area, such as the archetype of a filial piety woman, the disaster theory, the retaliation and cautious punishment idea,the rain-praying function of the sacrificial offering to the temple of the filial piety woman, and so on.Conclusion is a brief summary about this article. It sums up the research work and theoretical achievements, points out the insufficiencies of this research.