The Exploration Of Animal Writing In "Sou Shen Ji"

"Sou Shen Ji" is a notebook style supernatural novel written by Gan Bao in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.It is a masterpiece of the Wei and Jin dynasties,representing the outstanding achievements of the supernatural novel of the Wei and Jin dynasties.One third of the stories in "Sou Shen Ji" involve animal writing,which makes it necessary to conduct research from the broad sense of "animal writing",including various animals,various animal images,and animal story types,as the research object.Therefore,different from other studies on individual animal stories or certain types of animal stories,it will be a new way of self expectation.The original work of "Sou Shen Ji" does not exist,but Hu Yinglin compiled and lost it into a volume from various books in the Ming Dynasty.Now,based on the Li Jianguo edition and supplemented by the Wang Shaoying edition,a total of 259 entries related to animal writing have been compiled.From the perspective of animals themselves,the animals in "Sou Shen Ji" can be divided into three categories: "Real Animals"-animals in reality;"Strange Animals"-animals that do not possess supernatural abilities but make people feel strange;"Fantastic Animals"-unreal animals or animals with supernatural abilities."Real Animals" are often used as props for riding,breeding,sacrificing,eating,and sorcery.They are supplementary information to the background of the story or to highlight the characteristics of the characters,and do not reflect independent action and subjective will."Strange Animals" are closer to the core of the story,and some act as important plot elements,being the subject or object of the story."Fantastic Animals" often have wonderful descriptions,often as the subject."Sou Shen Ji" rarely describes and shapes animals directly,but reflects them in narrative.In addition,"Sou Shen Ji" includes folk stories involving animal writing,such as "Xinyu Nanzi","Baishui Sunv","Li Ji",and "Guchao Laomu",which are classic types of folk stories.The creation of animal images and the imagination of animal stories are the condensation of primitive totems and traditional culture.From the perspective of text writing,the animal writing in "Sou Shen Ji" belongs to the genre of "residual clumps of small language",reflecting the creative attribute of the last stages of history.The language is natural and concise,and the narrative perspective is flexible and diverse.At the end of the story,there is often a divination tail,which is a manifestation of the novel has not yet shaken off the influence of history and biography in its initial stage of prosperity.The absurd,strange,and frightening stories deeply metaphor the darkness of society,and are a psychological reflection of the people’s anxiety in troubled times.The cultural core of animal writing in "Sou Shen Ji" and its symbolic significance in the history of animal writing are particularly worth exploring."Sou Shen Ji",as a notebook style supernatural novel,has a diverse content,with diverse animal images originating from different cultural environments.Traditional animal views and animal culture,as well as the flourishing Taoism,sorcery,and Buddhism cultures of the Wei and Jin dynasties,are intertwined,making animal images more diverse and filling them with charm.The traditional animal images mentioned in "Sou Shen Ji" have directly promoted and deepened the formation and solidification of animal images with the spread of these stories.On the contrary,the subversive use of traditional animal images and the collection of Animal Images in Multicultural Context in "Sou Shen Ji" have added new meaning to the meaning of animal images,enriching the cultural and emotional connotations carried by animal images.Through comparison,it can be found that the animal writing of the Wei and Jin Dynasties inherited from the previous generation,while the later generation also made continuous breakthroughs in the animal writing of the Wei and Jin dynasties.The animal writing of the Wei and Jin Dynasties has an obvious imprint of the animal writing under the influence of animal myths,animal totems in the "quasi supernatural" period of the pre-Qin period,and the supernatural theory of the Han Dynasty.However,the later animal writing has been enriched along with the "genie" and "Demonizing" pioneered by the Wei and Jin Dynasties.The mythical novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties represent the peak form of the development of ancient supernatural novels,and the animals have also shone brilliantly in the supernatural novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties.