"strange Tales," The Human Spirit

From a new humanistic perspective, this thesis attempts to analyze the Liao Zhai Zhi Yi, the Chinese classical work, to find some humanistic factors that are beneficial for the reconstruction of modern personalities and characters. The thesis is primarily composed of three parts, including the definition and connotation of humanism in this thesis, the humanistic symbolization in the classic work, the core part, and conclusion. In the discussion of the humanistic symbolization, the writer tries to analyze it from three major aspects, which include the ideal person's outlook on value, the deep questions aroused by the thoughts of the old traditional Chinese theories and test system, and a systematic illustration of such questions as the origin of human beings. The argumentation of this thesis is to state the idea that the Pu Songling attempts to seek for a kind of ideal personality through his thoughts and reflections about the traditional culture and his concern over real life. Further, the essence, which is the humanism we should treasure and inherit, in the ideal personality that the Pu Songling tries to create can be borrowed for our modern personality construction. Also, this thesis includes discussions about dragons and snakes in classic works, aiming to state that the Pu Songling, using the mythological logics, tries to explore the origin of human beings.During the analysis, the writer of this thesis needs to point out that the Pu Songling expresses his ultimate care and concern about human life though his actual concern over a certain person, and makes efforts to create an ideal world based on such moralities as virtue and beauty to achieve the purpose of encouraging the good and healing the world.