Being a real historic personage, Ye Xiaoluan 叶小鸾, a talented lady in late Ming dynasty, not only triggered a literary family’s calamity, but also became into a public topic of discussion by widely circulating Wumengtang ji 午 梦堂集 (Collection of Noon Dream hall). She was clever and quick on the uptake, and excessively sentimental. Being romanced by her family, especially by Ye Shaoyuan 叶绍袁, her profile opened up a new outlook of literary conception, while her immortal sense and supernatural power, played up by Jin Shengtan’s 金圣叹 planchette writing, was endowed with romantic charm and rebelling appeal. Since being into Qing dynasty, Ye Xiaoluan had became the element for various literary works, but most of the works could simply simulate fairy tales or copy planchette words, except Honglou meng 红楼梦 (Dream of the red chamber) could deeply expand this imagery’s literary grace and core value in light of cultural interest and aesthetics aspect. The development of Ye Xiaoluan’s imagery and its success on aesthetics clearly indicated a literary element’s roadmap and structural feature, also disclosed that writer’s personality, liking, even the ethics level, could make significant effect on the literary conception and compositional structure.
In the late E. Han, Emperor Ling founded the Hongdumen Academy so that political favors were bestowed upon the literati to reshape the policy of personnel placement, which aroused violent remonstrations lodged by the ministers. And this became a significant event in the contemporary politics and in the literary history of the late E. Han as well. Scholars through the ages have dealt with the contentious issue, but the realm does not abound with in-depth and profound research studies. Beginning with the viewing angle of the complicated relationship between Confucianism and literature, where the background to the establishment of the Academy is painted in a great variety of academicism; this article analyzes the normal practice of the Han System of the Personnel Recommendation with a view to pinpointing the underlying cause of the Incident of the Hongdumen Academy. The cause is that the Han System of the Personnel Recommendation was bucked, which was grounded upon the Confucian moral integrity as the content, and upon xiangju lixuan as the norm. This article states that the Incident was, in relation with the danggu zhihuo, interconnected with the political structure based upon such social strata as shizu and shuzu, which had gradually been created since the E. Han. By means of the investigation and debate on the Incident, this article is written to demonstrate the relationship between literature and Confucianism of the Han dynasty, the literary conditions under development, and the complex political and ideological background against which the literary conditions existed by the end of the E. Han.
This paper examines the Buddhist chanting in Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern dynasties from several aspects, such as the historical position of it, the reason for its flourish, its speech way, etc. This paper also redetermines the relationship between Buddhist chanting and poetry writing in middle ancient times. The results for this research are as the following: First, The effective factor of Buddhism on Chinese phonology was not Buddhist chanting, but Sutra translation. Second, Buddhist verses were mainly translated or created by monks. However, in Yongming reign’s period of the Southern Qi dynasty, more and more verses were written by the literati. Third, the new type of Buddhist chanting had the same principle with poetry in Yongming reign’s period, and they were two major cultural movements keeping pace with each other in the same time. Fourth, the influence of the new type of Buddhist chanting on Yongming poetry was displayed on verbal expression. It made the way of Buddhist chanting in Wu region official, and pushed forward the establishment of a new way of poetry intoning which also based on the accent of Wu.
The spread of poetry by way of ancient postal service in Tang dynasty is an important subject in studying the development of Tang poetry. The ancient postal system in Tang dynasty included both water route and land route which covered every corner of the country, formed a highly developed and strict system. Besides transmitting government decrees and transporting officials and goods, the ancient postal service also helped the development of Tang poetry. Many historical documents proved that ancient postal service in Tang dynasty ensured an immediate transportation between poets and contributed to the wide-spread of the poetry, and it also served as a bridge between the poets who were in great distance and then helped to form different poetry schools and fashion.
Ci-poetry and drama are both genres of musical literature and the theatricality of the ci-poetry is demonstrated from many different aspects, such as the first-person narration, the emotional lyrics with unique features, the musical dialogues between two people or among many people, the dramatic conflict presented in the lyrics, the dramatic actions and the dramatic situations, etc. There are all kinds of plays in the ci-poetry, namely the serious drama, the comedy, the tragedy, the comedy with tears, the fantasy and the allegorical play. The ci-poetry of the Tang and Song dynasties exerted great influence on drama and on the other hand, the army-joining drama of the Tang dynasty and the miscellaneous drama of the Song dynasty to some extent inspired the creation of ci-poetry. The relationship between ci-poetry and drama confirms the mutual infiltration and cross reference among different literary genres in the Song dynasty.
With politics as its driving force, the cabinet-style literature came into full bloom in the early Ming dynasty. After Emperor Jingtai’s reign, the literary thoughts started to change, which was also related to the political situation. After Tumu Crisis, the cabinet-style literature lost its political foundation, the cabinet-style practitioners gradually gave up their literary views and the core people of the cabinet-style literature were deprived of their influence as the political leaders. The scholars lost their confidence in the imperial government and the subjects of their literary creation were changed from the celebrating the prosperity of the country to the description of their personal life and interests. More importantly, the emergence of Baisha philosophy of mind broke the dominance of Cheng and Zhu’s idealist philosophy over the country. The focus was shifted from the ideal to the heart and the literary creation aimed at expressing the sincere feelings and representing the true human nature. In terms of the aesthetic interest, the classical and the standard gradually gave way to the natural and the pristine. The emergence of Baisha philosophy of mind and its related literary concepts to some extent led to the emotion-oriented literary thoughts in the late Ming dynasty.
Shuangliu xuan shiwen ji 双柳轩诗文集 (Anthology of sanctum with two willows) was an anthology of some early works of Yuan Mei (1716-1798), an eminent writer of the Qing dynasty, and had been published before he got famous. Taking the enormous differences found during collation of this anthology with Yuan Mei quan ji 袁枚全集 (Corpus of Yuan Mei), a contemporary collated edition of Xiaocangshan fang quan ji 小仓山房全集 (Complete works of Xiaocangshan villa) compiled in Yuan Mei’s senectitude, as an example, this paper is trying to reveal that a work may go through continuous revisions or even recomposition before they are finalized and taken into a corpus. Like burying a body, every compilation of one’s work is a layer on the first-hand work, and the latest layer is no doubt the farthest from the body. Thus the author suggests that researches attempting to trace diachronies of a renowned writer’s works should dig deep, and if the body itself has lost into dust, at least the early compilations could bring us much closer to how the works used to be.