A Study On Lu You’s Epitaphs

Lu You was one of the great writers in the literary circle of the Southern Song Dynasty,with excellent poetry and prose creation.However,his achievements in prose have long been overshadowed by his achievements in poetry.Compared with poetry,his achievements in prose have not received due attention.Although Lu You’s epitaphs take up a small proportion in all his prose creations,they also have unique research value.The Weinan Anthology contains 47 epitaphs,covering a wide range of areas,reflecting the social,political and folk conditions of the Song Dynasty.With superb artistic skills,Lu You has created a large number of characters with distinctive characteristics,which has important literature value and literary value.This paper takes Lu You’s epitaphs as the research object,and makes a comprehensive and systematic analysis from the dimensions of social culture and stylistics.On the basis of describing the life and deeds of the tomb owner and highlighting his merits and virtues,Lu You’s epitaphs integrate his own fate,thoughts and emotional attitudes,with rich connotations.They not only reflect the contradiction between Song and Jin,and the social and cultural conditions of the Song dynasty,but also express Lu You’s high patriotism,embody his criticism of the bad atmosphere of scholar-officials and his resentment of those who failed to meet their talents.At the same time,as a mourning style,the epitaphs also contain his grief for his relatives and friends who died.In the praise of the female tomb owner’s excellent products,they also reflect Lu You’s feudal and traditional view of women.Lu You’s epitaphs reflect the consistent style of his prose,with distinct features in narrative,language,structure and characterization.In terms of narration,Lu You adhered to the principle of recording,excelled in cutting,narrated the great sections of characters,and introduced the discussion into the inscription,which embodied the theory in the matter.Under different political circumstances,or out of the need of "taboo for the dead",he flexibly used a variety of narrative strategies,such as sketching,hidden writing,explanation and direct writing.The language of his epitaphs is plain,natural and concise,accurate and vivid without carving.In terms of writing structure,Lu You mostly adhered to the traditional writing norms of steles,but about one third of his articles began in a flexible way,breaking the inherent structure and "morphing" into prose.In the aspect of writing,Lu You uses side setting,detail description and other techniques to create a large number of characters with distinct personalities,which can be described as thousands of faces,each with its own characteristics.Lu You is good at drawing lessons from his predecessors.He draws on Han Yu’s natural and vivid language,flexible structure,and characterization skills,and Ouyang Xiu’s attitude of writing straight and concise language features.Lu You consciously created epitaphs as a historian.His articles have been included in national history and local Chronicles,as well as cited by various notes and academic works,which are of great bibliographic value.Lu You also made his own contribution to the development of epitaph: he still adhered to the concise style of writing in spite of the increasingly complicated and lengthy situation of the creation of epitaphs,further innovated the system of epitaphs on the basis of predecessors,carried forward the fine spirit of the movement of ancient inscription,further expanded the influence of ancient inscription,and continued the flourishing situation of the development of epitaphs.