Ji Kang Studies

This paper mainly is constituted of three chapters. It generally studies Ji Kang from his whole life and the times he lived to his thought and success in literature.The first chapter is made up of two parts. While the first part is introducing historical background of the dynasty which Ji Kang lives and in order to find out the social factors of Ji Kang's experience. From politics, Wei and Jin dynasties were extremely reactionary, it apparently affected scholars' outlook of the society. In literature, Wei and Jin dynasties are in the medium position of Han dynasty and Sui&Tang dynasties. On the whole, literature became vivid and full of people's real feelings instead of describing utilitarianism. We can call such kind of trend "literary consciousness". The long process of development, including Jian'an literature, Zhengshi literature, Jin Dynasty literature. Because of living in this period, Ji Kang made great progress in literature. The other part is illustrating the life of Ji Kang, including his birth place, relations between him and his brothers, as well as the cause of death.Chapter two mainly talks about the feature of his thought. Generally speaking, the thought of Ji Kang is from Confucianism to Taoism. Ji Kang accepted formal education in his early time, just like the saying"Hi-for Kang said: 'Family History of Confucianism, only rarely-jun, Kuang not step group." In"Annals of Three Kingdoms. A Survey of Wei Kingdom. Biography of Wang Can " , which was manifested from his poem works and prose works. We can have a guess that if Ji Kang wasn't in the darkest Wei & Jin dynasties, he could have engaged in the Confucian education like other traditional scholars. Because it was so reactionary during that times and he was just a common person, the door to the traditional Confucianism and the promotion way was closed in front of him. Finally, he had to study Taoism. Referring to the thought of health preservation, Ji Kang accepted the view of Zhuangzi and Laozi, who are two famous scholars of Taoism in ancient China, and pushed it in a further step. Simply speaking, it is just like "Repair and to protect God, peace of mind to body" , which was in his Analects of Health Preservation. Based on this, he also attached importance to the preservation of one's inspirit. In the thought of music, he was sure that music came from the nature and it existed objectively, which was manifested in "The voice for its smell is still between heaven and earth". On the other hand, aiming to the traditional Confucian music theory of "transform social traditions", he thought music should affect people by using its peace, that is to say using "he" to attract people. The last two sections focused on his anti-traditional thought, so it's fresh to be read.The final chapter discussed Ji Kang's literary achievement. It analyzes Ji Kang's four-character poems at first. After the Classic of Poetry, Ji Kang is one of the representatives of four-character poets. He learned the form, language and fu, bi and xing from Classic of Poetry, which made his works, own the flavor of four-character poems. On the other hand, he innovated the Classic poetry from fu, bi and xing technique, duality and comparison techniques and the enlargement of the poetic conception and background. Secondly, Ji Kang poetry in the image was classified and researched. Ji Kang's poems about the image are divided into four categories. The first category is a natural image, and the second category is plant image, the third category is animal image, and the final figure is human Image. Almost all of the images in Ji Kang's poetry can be used "unconventional" to describe, it is probably because of his transcendent feelings, meaningful affection, uprighted character and his strong will. Section three simply describes Ji Kang's prose. The whole passage indicates that Ji Kang's prose has characteristics of his own, further more, its point of view is unique by comparison of ancient scholars. In addition, this part also implies Ji Kang, as a metaphysician, is thinking carefully, which is particularly reflected in several of his papers.The conclusion part mainly talks about deficiencies of Ji Kang's poetry creation.