Oral Narrative And Power Discourse

The existence of a multitude of Yu materials during Zhou,Pre-Qin to the early Han dynasty has been ascertained,along with excavated manuscripts exposed to the scholars.Yu materials also appeared in historical texts like Zuozhuan,Guoyu,and Pre-Qin philosophers' books,lumped into works of literature which survived thousands of years such as Hanshiwaizhuan,Shuoyuan,Xinxu and Kongzijiayu.The contents of some of them are about historical figures and events,the narrative of which entails more particulars,stylized modes of characters and narrative pattern,compared with classical texts such as Lunyu.These narrative materials were regarded as “Anecdotes” as well,on the ground of their aesthetic nature and literariness which transcended the standards of general memoirs.Among all the anecdotes,there are the texts relevant to Zilu,Zigong,and Yanyuan named as “three disciples followed Confucius”.The narration of three disciples in classical texts such as Lunyu is sententious and undemonstrative,but function descriptively in anecdotes.Here is an anecdote which described that three disciples and Confucius discussed their ambitions on the Nong Mountain.Zilu,Zigong and Yanyuan responded to their teachers in turn,and were rated by Confucius as man with quality of “valiance”,“eloquence”,and“holiness” respectively.Named as “discussing about ambitions on the Nong Mountain”,this anecdote was documented by many books.Another anecdote is about the discussion launched by Confucius and his disciples of the question that how to cope with the dilemma between transcendental morality and harsh reality when they were trapped on the road from Chen to Cai.Named as “discussing about Tao on the road from Chen to Cai”,this anecdote had a large amount of different texts which appeared in different way of storytelling.A series of variants of them,the narrative pattern of which paralleled with the “discussing about ambitions on the Nong Mountain”,indicated that there existed a tendency of stylization of narrative mode and the construction of characters.Coincidentally,this narrative mode named as “progressive three-tiered”system,occurred frequently in Yu materials related to other figures and events in history.The aesthetic genre of three characters in these anecdotes were familiar with three disciples,namely,Zilu,Zigong and Yanyuan.Hence a collective aesthetic narrative directed to influence,even form the final version of the narrative texts,through the way of oral transmission rather than the advertently imaginative creation of scolars and writers.Focused on two anecdotes,“discussing about ambitions on the Nong Mountain” and “discussing about Tao on the road from Chen to Cai”,the relatively innovative research method of breaking through the traditional text-centered research framework,coupled with the methodology of Morphology of Folktale,make possible the depiction of the order of the oral texts development.The first chapter shows the different records of two anecdotes respectively thanks to the complexity of the oral transmission.This phenomenon demonstrates the oral way obscured by the texts.The means of Morphology of Folktale through which the common parts of different narratives of every anecdotes weredrawed,help ascertain the stable narrative core during the transmission of the anecdotes,and the cross development of plots in “discussing about Tao on the road from Chen to Cai” and other anecdotes.The second chapter analyzes the required features of stylized narrative modes and character types of two anecdotes from oral narrative perspective.Zilu,Zigong and Yanyuan responded to teacher one by one and therefore constructed three narrative layers,which called “progressive three-tiered”system as a whole.Three disciples demonstrated the projections of three aesthetic types and three states of self-culture.The three types interrelated,and formed a progressive system,so did the three states.The images of three disciples were parallel with descriptions in other documents before Han dynasty,which means figures of them appeared in these two anecdotes represented a public consensus.The third chapter analyzes the relationship between oral tradition and the “progressive three-tiered”system and the stylized characters construction drawn from the analysis in two chapters above.First of all,the mountain's varied names of “Nong”,“Rong”,“Jing” which shared similarity pronunciation in ancient Chinese language show a probability of oral transmission.The analysis of oral generation and oral transmission of “discussing about Tao on the road from Chen to Cai” will benefit from teasing out the specific development order from its varied texts;Second,the meaning of encoding the “great tradition” and the high effectiveness of patterned narrative may enable the “progressive three-tiered”system became the first and best structure of oral works of literature.Third,the stable character construction of “the three disciples in the journey to the west”,namely,Sunwukong,Zhuwuneng,and Shawujing,and “the three ministers in Shu Kingdom”,namely,Zhangfei,Guanyu,and Zhugeliang,which all explicitly sprang from oral folktales,were similar with the construction of “three disciples of Confucian school”,that is to say,Zilu,Zigong and Yanyuan.The similarities are the embodiment of an aesthetic construction,which abstractively speaking is a construction of “quality”,“embelishment” and “the unity of both of them”,ascribed to strong aesthetic pattern which rooted in oral traditions.In the fourth chapter,after the analysis of works of literature concerned with “Yu”documents and“Shuo”documents,the tradition of recording oral materials which give anecdotes which transmitted orally the form of text surface.“Yu”documents stemmed from the cultural environment of recording good words in Pre-Qin.“Shuo”documents from the behaviors of “Shuo” and therefore mainly recorded anecdotes and fables.According to a certain need,writers employed discourse resources selectively to construct their value system.The compilers of Hanshiwaizhuan,Shuoyuan,and Kongzijiayu took advantages of public discourse resources transcribed from the oral tradition in the process of forming a text-based,value-oriented community.The state's values have been fashioned in the form of storytelling,meanwhile the anecdotes had been reorganized in the value system and gained the authority which came from the literature texts per se.The aesthetic quality of infant novels in anecdotes,based on the stylized characters structure and narrative mode rather than imaginative creation of a certain writer,sprang from the process of oral generation and oral transmission.Continuing along this path,narrative of classical texts depicted fundamental images of threedisciples with holiness and constructed states' value system on top of fictional elements,and hitherto occupied the center of the main academic discourse on the ground of authority from classics and polity.Otherwise,anecdotes,which took advantage of aesthetic pleasure with them and highly effective way of oral transmission,fashioned knowledge used to be grasped by elites and ideas of Confucianism,virtually became the majority of public narrative and eventually shaped collective spirits.