A Reasarch On The Image Of Yan Guang

Yan Guang was a famous hermit living in the Eastern Han Dynasty.His reputable frugal life style words and deeds of despising against the ruling elites have aroused people's extremely high interests,and have been adapted into numerous legends,poems and novels.This transmission of cultural phenomenon has gradually transformed into a cultural image with its special characteristics.This article is deemed to analyze those contents relating to Yan Guang by combining historical background and focusing on poems and architecture relating to him,sort out the evolutional path and characteristics of Yan Guang?s image from Han to Song and even Yuan Dynasty,and try to probe into the essence of his image and the driving force behind this evolution.This article has totally four chapters:The first chapter will dive into the official historical legends recorded in Book of Later Han and The Legends of Hermits to comb through the establishment process of Yan Guang?s image in the late Han Dynasty from the viewpoints of the relationship between Yan Guang and Guangwu as well as his relationship with other Han officials and analyze why Yan Guang were praised highly in later ages by combing related historical facts.The second chapter combs through Yan Guang?s image and its changes in the poems drafted by generations of writers since the Wei,Jin to the Yuan dynasties,and will try to give an analysis and explanation to Yan Guang?s image and his spiritual world.By setting different historical milestones,it can be seen that the people in Tang Dynasty mostly cared about his spirit and morality,which was merely a continuation of the history book?s image;in Song Dynasty,Yan Guang?s educational significance of combative attitude toward corruption and encouragement to cowards begun to manifest.At the same time,in the poems written in the Southern Song Dynasty,the image of YanGuang began to show some negative signs;the attention drawn to Yan Guang during the Yuan Dynasty has shown a bipolarization tendency,and Yan Guang?s image was getting complex.The third chapter wages an investigation from those architectures such as ancestral temples,academies and fishing platforms which are the bearers of Yan Guang?s spirit,and tries to sort out its developmental veins including the construction and reconstruction of the Yan Guang temple,the establishment of the fishing table and Gao Jie academies,the fishing table?s evolutional trace,etc,and probes into the fishing,Taoist uniformity and loyalty spirits which were borne by the fishing table.Yan Guang not only becomes the spokesperson of the hermit?s personality,but also is endowed with multiple layers of cultural implications by closely combining the new Confucianism under the big trend of syncretism of Confucianism,Buddhism and Taoism.The four chapter will peep into the fundamental roots for Yan Guang?s image and the comments about him from the poetic and architectural perspective.Fusing fictions and non-fictions,efforts will be put to investigate the historical evolutional progress of Yan Guang?s image which is itself such a peculiar culture sign and the freshly acquired cultural implications.By taking the advantageous tensile forces of historical books,literary works and artistic pieces,this image is being transmitted through the infiltration of these elements.Its spiritual extension is being enlarged constantly.Its cultural circle is amplified incessantly.During the Yuan dynasty,the image of Yan Ziling began to shy away from the restrictions of official legends and became more vividly depicted and developed in literary works.During the Ming and Qing dynasties,Yan Ziling?s image was conceived as an almost perfect embodiment of divinity.Since the beginning of China?s modern history until now,the discussions and new works related to Yan Guang have been coming out all the time,his presence still implies an practical significance at modern history.