Study On The Wuzhong School In The Middle Of The Ming Dynasty

The literature of Wuzhong (Suzhou area) is a very important part of the literature world in the Ming dynasty. But she was often been neglected in study of the Chinese literature history. In fact the literature of Wuzhong is the inevitable outcome of the Chinese literature. The Chinese ancient literature may be divided into two parts, one is classical literature which served the politic affairs, the other is secularized literature which is served person's everyday life. Since middle of the Tang dynasty the literature which served everyday life became more and more popularity and formed a main trend in the Yuan and Ming dynasty. Everyday life and secularized emotion become the main substance of the literature. The Wuzhong school is the backbone of this literature trend. The Wuzhong school mainly included Du Qiong (杜琼) , Shen Zhou (沈周),WuKuan (吴宽) ,WangAo (王鏊) ,ZhuYunming (祝允明) , Tang Yin (唐寅), Wen Zhengming (文微明), Xu Zhenqing (徐祯卿), Cai Yu (蔡羽) etc. Wuzhong scholars had a different attitude in their life and politics to traditional scholars. They no longer attached their life value to the imperial authoririty. On the contrary they likely enjoyed their own life. They stand on the Han school of classical philology (汉学) and opposed the Song school of classical philology (宋学) . They valued real learning and despised metaphysics. In the literary creation Wuzhong school followed Wang Wei (王维) , Meng Haoran (孟浩然) , Wei Ymgwu (韦应物) , Liu Zongyuan (柳宗元) . They enjoyed everyday life and secularized emotion. Wuzhong scholars exerted great influence on literature in the late Ming dynasty.Wuzhong school was not dependency of Qizi (七子) seven masters in the literary world in the middle of the Ming dynasty) . It was an independent school and it was a deputy of secularized trend of literature. This paper discuss four representative figures of Wuzhong school. They are Zhu Yunming, Tang Yin Wen Zhengming and Xu Zhenqing.Zhu Yunming once had a noble family but he himself lived in a ordinary life. He had mixed nature: aristocrat and populace. He advocated the Han school of classical philology and criticized sharply the Song school of classical philology and had some heterodoxy color in his mind.Tang Yin was a real populace. He lived in the town all his life. He had little traditional idea in his mind. He often used civil idea to criticize traditional idea. He had breaked through the old idea of literature. He was an outstanding representativenfigure of the secularized trend of literature.Wen Zhengming was another representative figure of Wuzhong school. His literary creation had style of simple and elegant. He was a leader of Wuzhong literary world for more than 30 years. He opposed faction activities and advocated to take in everything which is good for ones own writings.Xu Zhenqing was the most outstanding representative figure of the Wuzhong literary world. His poetries and poetic theory was highly prized in Chinese history of literature. In his early days he was an important member of Wuzhong school. "Study on poetry" is the program of Wuzhong school. At the age of 27 he came to Beijing and became a member of seven masters. But he still had element of Wuzhong style. The discussion about poetry between Xu Zhenqing and Li Mengyang is a dispute of tow literary trend: the classical literature and the secularized trend of literature. Wuzhong literature is not a model literature for politics but for human life.This paper try to make clearly about Wuzhong literature in the middle of Ming dynasty so as to lay a foundation to further study of the literature in the Ming dynasty.