Literary Edification And Gender Cultural Construction

Works from the perspective of literary edification usually have the function of evoking emotions and stimulating the rise of moral emotions,and are important tools for rulers to carry out social edification and defend the stability of social order.Under the guidance of the concept of literary edification,the so-called "acoustic edification" and "poetry edification" have been formalized in the pre-Qin period.Taking ritual,music and poetry as the main carrier,they interpret the moral and ethical concepts and behavioral norms centered on Ren(humanity)and Li(ceremony),as far as the field of marriage and family is concerned,they advocate women’s good manners,and defend the harmony of family and clan.During the Qin and Han Dynasties,the appearance of books of women edification,such as Jiao Nv,Lienvzhuan,and Nvjie enriched and the content of women’s literary edification under the background of Han Dynasty Confucianism,and came the traditional "women’s morality".On the whole,the discipline and edification of women in pre-Qin,Qin and Han literary texts are basically concentrated in four categories: morality,speech,appearance,and work.By examining the norms of the "Four Virtues",it can be seen that women’s gender role was shaped under the male-centered consciousness at that time,and the female consciousness degenerated almost entirely into a derivative of the patriarchal society.The unearthed of Wuji,one of the Han bamboo slips in Peking University,provides a typical literary sample for exploring the real-life situation of women in the Han Dynasty in addition to institutional norms.Taking care of Wu Ji from the angle of literary edification function,with a gender study on it,we can detect these conclusions.On the one hand,the heroine Wuji deviated from the principle of "four virtues",which deconstructs,to a certain extent,the gender role expectations of women in the society of the Han Dynasty,and manifests the significant difference between requirements from the social consciousness and the women’s real life,as well as shows that there was always a time lag between norms and specific practices.On the other hand,Wu ji had not yet completely escaped the framework of the "four virtues",her internalization of women’s morality was revealed in the various family relationships.In this sense,in fact,whether the concept of marriage or of family honor and inferiority,the speeches and behaviors of the main characters in Wu Ji shows their acceptance of the mainstream ideology of society,the same goes for Yu Shi and Zhou Chun.Similarly,from the perspective of literary writing,Wu Ji,created under the background of the political and religious view of literature in the Han Dynasty,whether its popular style of Fu,the theme of "jealous women",or its author’s arrangement of the plot and the ending of the story,all point to the edification of literature on women,and show their creating context of the male-centered theme.