The Research Of The Proverbial-style Essay In Late Ming Dynasty And Confucian Culture

The proverbial-style essay, distinguished by its free format with simple words butincisive meanings, is a kind of Ming and Qing Dynasties essays expressing scholars’life ideals and reflecting their spiritual worlds. Academia’s study on theproverbial-style essay is relatively limited with focuses mainly on stylistic features,artistic form, single work and ideological content. Particularly, the research on theideological content put more emphasis on Buddhist doctrines’ influences on theproverbial-style essays which ignores the proverbial-style essay’s inheritance anddevelopment from Confucian culture.The late Ming Dynasty is not only an era ofintegration of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism but also the times witnessingsociety’s darkness and turbulence. Along with eunuch’s autocracy, internal turmoiland external threat, the imperial court of the Ming Dynasty was corrupted andincompetent. Scholars in this troubled times tried to live a sequestered life bystudying on Buddhism, meanwhile, they also had a strong awareness of preparing foradversities. What’s more, all those behaviors show Confucian scholars’ feelings andconcerns towards their country and people.Indeed, the late Ming Dynasty scholars made both inheritance and developmentfrom traditional Confucianism. There were a lot of sentences and statements thatreflect authors’ thoughts of Confucianism:"To practice humanity depends on oneself"(showing the emphasis on people’s social value), self-discipline and responsibility of"The cultivation of himself in reverential carefulness"(reflecting strong awareness ofunexpected development and displaying people’s inner spirit),"Admire and respectdisciplines and ethics"(honestly face adversity and chase one’s inner richness),thepractice and adherence of "doctrine of the mean" and so on.However, the Confucian thoughts reflected from the proverbial-style essay haveobvious features and colors of the late Ming Dynasty, for example, its affirmation onpeople’s natural disposition and suspect as well as criticism towards etiquette. As aresult of specific situation of the era, scholars’’ passion of "State Governing and worldPeace" tarnished and instead transferred to chase elegant and tranquil life. Theproverbial-style essay is a "Practice in art" stage for the late Ming Dynasty scholars.It not only manifests scholars’ elegant and interesting daily life but also develops akind of writing with pure sense of beauty. Nevertheless, its social meaning is limitedfor its excessive pursuit to be pure and lofty while seemingly sentimental and itsdistance from general people’s public life.