Study On The Concept Of Marriage In Zuo Zhuan

The history written down in Zuo Zhuan include all aspects of social life, the marriage of the dukes and women in the marriage appear at the beginning of this book. This paper makes a comprehensive analysis of the marriage in Zuo Zhuan, and studies the concepts of marriage from politics, eugenics and ethics.This paper is divided into three parts: preface, text and epilogue. Preface briefly summarizes the achievements and the present situation of the study on the marriage in Zuo Zhuan, and states the purpose and significance of writing this paper.Text is divided into four chapters, the first chapter disserts the background of Chunqiu Period, and generalizes the style and features of marriage in Zuo Zhuan such as divine before get married, parents’order or secretly married, divorce and remarried are relatively free, polygamy and grading among wives, same surname of marriage.The next three chapters discuss the marriage meticulously from politics, eugenics and ethics, we can know the concepts of marriage in Zuo Zhuan from it. The second chapter investigates the relationship between marriage and politics. In one hand, marriage is the link to maintain the friendly relations, in the other hand, marriage is the tool to obtain the political benefits, women in the political marriage also like the tool. The third chapter summarizes the concept of eugenics in Zuo Zhuan, it describes people in Chunqiu Period attach importance to heirs, especially the male heir, the Book of Songs reflects Multi-sub-worship, and then discuss the progress and the limitation of the eugenics in Zuo Zhuan. The forth chapter discusses the marriage in Zuo Zhuan from the moral level, investigates the moral values and the moral standards in Zuo Zhuan from two aspects:funerals and husband and wife.The epilogue makes a brief analysis of the inheritance and development of the concept of marriage in Zuo Zhuan in Han Dynasty. It is based on the above discussion, and consults Biography of Women which is written by Liu Xiang and The Research of Marriage and Funeral Etiquette in Han Dynasty which is written by Yang Shuda.