Disputation Of The Tung-Lin Faction And Literature Activity Of The Late Ming Period

The Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction was a great political event in the late Ming Period and it implicated the society at that time a lot. From the political angle, it was a time of turbulence and confusion. The combats between parties are frequent and the dominion of the Dynasty was going to its end. From the ideology angle, the Confucianism was withering away while the Enlightenment thoughts were flushing. From the academic angle, the thoughts of Wang-Yangming came into dominance and became as important as the thoughts of Zhu and Cheng. From the literature angle, there were all kinds of genres and both the elegance and the vulgar were popular.This paper discusses on the relationship between the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction, literati parties and genres in the late Ming Period from a political angle and an academic angle and tries to reveal the influences of the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction on the literature of the late Ming Period.The paper contains nine parts:First of all, it was a summary of the research by other scholars on the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction and its relationship with the literature of the late Ming Period. As an introduction, the author raises the important subjects. .In the first chapter, the author scans the historical preconditions of the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction and tries to show us the important factors in the occurrence and development of it in the context of the late Ming Period.The next chapter was on the literature activities of the Tung-Lin Mocement and Tung-Lin Faction. It reveals both the academic activities and literature activities of the faction and its contributions to the regional literature from a history prospect.The author casts on the regional distributions of the Tung-Lin Faction and their literature works in the third chapter. He shows us how diversiform the literature works were at that time by seeing into the different styles in different regions. He also thinks that the pomes expressing loyalty and fearless by the "six men of honour" and later the "seven men of honour" in the Tung-Lin Faction before their death shows their political dreams of saving the country and people solemnly and sorrowfully.The author concentrates on the literature activities of the Fu League and Ji League in the fourth chapter. He analyses their conversions from literary leagues to political leagues with the influence of the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction and their literature activities with political diatheses.In the following chapter, the author gives a depiction of the literature activities of other schools, especially of the mocement of Gong'an and Jingling, both of which insisted that literature works should express personality and pursue liberty. He also points out the transition of their literature styles with the political influence and academic influence by the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction. Moreover, the author takes Dacheng Ruan for example, sees into his activities of organizing a faction and acting and thus shows us the literature activities of the Court eunuch Faction.In the sixth chapter, the author discusses on the conclusions on the literature of the late Ming Period by Qianyi Qian, who was the head of the Tung-Lin Faction and also the leading character in the literature fields. The experiences full of frustrations of Qian made great influence on his points of view on the literature of the late Ming Period, but the author sings high praise for his spirits of putting literature into reality and practice, especially when considering his time of an ending of a period.In the last chapter of the paper, the author makes a conclusion of the Disputation of the Tung-Lin Faction and the development of the literature in the late Ming Period. After discussing on the political relationship and academic relationship between the Dispute of the Tung-Lin Faction and the literature leagues and mocements at that time, the author digs into the form of the political consciousness of the literature leagues, the internal transitions of the two great literature trends of thoughts and also the conversion of the producing conceptions of the reality literature. In the end, the author still suggests carrying out the research in stages.The final part of the paper was a list of names of the members of the Tung-Lin Faction and Court eunuch Faction, and also the political activities of the Tung-Lin Faction as an appendix.