The Interpretation Of Huai Nan Zi’s Myth Artistic

Myth，as a historical and cultural treasure of early humans, has condensed theancient economy, social and cultural life into representative fragments with greatsignificance. However, there is no monumental masterpiece about the ancient mythsin China. Huai Nan Zi, after Shan Hai Jing in the number of myths, contains a largenumber of precious myths. This thesis will anylize the texts in Huai Nan Zi and theauthor Liu An to have a comprehensive understanding of the connotation,development and evolution ofthe myths. The thesis contains five chapters as thefollowing:Chapter1: Western Han Dynasty culture and Huai Nan Zi’s immortalcharacteristics. The most prominent feature of the cultural environment where Liu Anlived in, is the whole society filled with strong sense of immortal. The nobilities,especially the rulers, took deep interest in the immortal sacrifice. Fuelled by thecountless alchemists and the trend in the whole society, immortal thought in WesternHan Dynasty became increasingly fierce. Liu An, who was under such social thoughtand in "Chu " where people “believe the ghost, like worship”, inevitably influnced bythe immortal thought. In addition, his own experience and the unfortunate fate madehim can not find a way out, and can only attached hopes to immortal alchemy.Ideological and cultural background of the society at that time, as well as Liu An’sown reasons, have made Huai Nan Zi presented a unique color.Chapter2:The mythological narration and philosophical ideas in Huai Nan Zi.Huai Nan Zi records a lot of myths which can be divided into creation myths, naturemyths, travel myth and so on. The author Interpreted the advanced philosophy byfairy tales. With creation myths, it showsthe society and life of the universe; withnatural myth, it expresses ancestor’s views and attitudes toward the world; with travelmyths, it expresses the unconventional and sublimation of life.Chapter3: The mythological language in Huai Nan Zi. The author used a lot ofnarrative rhetorical devices in the myths, such as analogy, parallelism andexaggeration. The text also shows distinct characteristics of "Fu", which to some extent adds flavor to a myth, reflecting the author’s superb language ability, and alsoshows the unique charm of the literary style of Han Dynasty.Chapter4: The Chu style of Huai Nan Zi. The text is full of romanticism withthe flexible use of fairy tales. Besides, with a lot of Chu words in the text, the Chustyle become more prominent.Chapter5: The historical position of Huai Nan Zi. In the process of developmentand evolution, the myths in Huai Nan Zi mainly showed three modes: a part of themyths’ divinity had been gradually dwindling to history based myth; some of themythology continued strong to pursuit of immortality; some of the myths’ rationalitycolor growing and becoming philosophy. Thus, readers can see the trend in thedevelopment of Chinese ancient myth, and give it an accurate historical position.