A Study Of Liu Xianxin’s Theory Of Literary Form

Liu Xianxin is a modern genius of nationalism and a well-known scholar in Shu in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period,but because he is so devoted to his studies,he never left Bashu for almost his whole life,so few people know him.His academic research is broad and comprehensive,covering the four parts with "Push Ten Books",and in the theory of literary form,he is not only able to take Chinese traditional culture as the root,but also to borrow western studies to "cultivate",and also to base on the times,integrating the ancient and the modern,with many innovative ideas,which has important academic and practical significance.Liu Xianxin links "literary form" with "literature" and uses "literary form" to explain the essence of "literature",as he says the "literary form" includes three aspects: genre,system and style.Based on the actual situation of traditional Chinese stylistics,he integrates Western formalist aesthetic thought,defines the categories by the content of the genre,encompasses all genres with three categories: narrative,reasoning,and lyricism,establishes the formal factors such as word count,sentence line and rhyme as the system,and discusses the style by order,sound,color and shi.This not only refocuses attention on the essay itself,but also breaks through the traditional Chinese style theory of "use" as the center of thought.In terms of the classification of literary form,Liu Xianxin,who was influenced by Zhang Xuecheng’s theory that "all six scriptures are history" and his own cataloguing,compiled the "Form of Writing",which includes sixty-four literary forms,and at the same time categorized the literary styles into the text of records,informations and writings.It is also divided into four categories and three systems.The author has studied in depth the three main genres of the work,namely,the biographies,the eight-legged essay and the chinese opera.Liu Xianxin discusses biographies,starting from tracing the source and strict distinction,tracing the source of biographies and xingzhuang from the internal reality of the text,and identifying the differences between Lie-zhuan,Za-zhuan and Bie-zhuan,showing a strong sense of discriminatory style.He discusses the shortcomings of Bie-Zhuan,pointing out the problems of "vagueness" "legend" and "high simplicity" in writing after the Song Dynasty,and suggests that biographies should be "detailed" "authentic" and "material" in writing,which is instructive for solving the problems of "homogenization" "falsity" and "hollowness" in biographical writing today.Liu Xianxin discusses the eight-legged essay,starting from correcting the name of it,arguing that the eight-legged essay is not inferior,and that although it is a style for examinations,it can also be used to understand the world,and that compared with Western studies because it is more logical than other styles.On the eight-legged essay method,he advocates learning the "great method" and "living method" of it,and transcribing the theories of various schools.The importance of logic and the method of capturing the eight-legged essays are instructive for teaching and writing essays today.Liu Xianxin’s thesis on chinese opera,in the midst of the tide of the times,adheres to the traditional Chinese opera,forming a view of opera centered on edification.He points out that opera is directly inherited from music and education,and that it should be used for edification because it is characterized by "broad and easy to be good".He proposed that the structure of opera should be "concise and short",and that fiction should conform to the reality of life and be rooted in emotion and righteousness,which is useful for edification.In response to the traditional opera’s obsessive pursuit of "happy" endings,he pointed out the need to return to traditional Chinese contexts to find a solution.The language of opera should be true to its nature,with the importance of "Tuo Liu" and "Qie Jun",and also united in "broad and easy".His view of chinese opera offers lessons to be learned from the narrowing of subject matter,the excessive elegance of language and the utilitarianization and entertainment of today’s writing.Liu Xianxin’s theory of Literary form also has certain shortcomings.However,his literary form theory is of great value to the study of style history and the practice of writing articles today.