Study Of Fan Zuyu’s Tang Jian

Fan Zuyu(AD 1041-1098), courtesy name was Chunfu. At the age of 23, he successfully passed the Imperial Examination and became a first-rate jinshi, and was especially good at literature and history. In the third years of Xining(AD 1070) of Emperor Song Shen Zong, Si Maguang organized literati to compile and revise Zi Zhi Tong Jian. Fan was employed to take charge ofthe part of Tang dynasty. Since then, study of history, especially Tang history had become his lifelong career. Fan left rich writings in his life, among which his participant Zi Zhi Tong Jian and self-compiled Tang Jian were the most famous ones. Tang Jianlaied grounfwork for Fan’s position in historical realm and he was hailed as “Tang Jian Gong” by academics. When it was accomplished,historians gave it very high appreciation and broad attention. Combining with existed study achievement, this thesis studies Tang Jian from three aspects.Firstly, the author researches the background of Fan Zuyu’s compositions, his lifetime and his ideological origins. Fan happened to live in the period of great development of literature in Song dynasty. During this period, traditional ways of scholarship, academic concepts were greatly impacted, so that new academic system can come into being. In terms of historical realm, new academic system strengthens thereferential function to history, but it takes “using history as a mirror” as the primary work in the aspect of historical study. And its study range was extended from previous matter-of-fact study to other aspects, such as the cultivation of emperors’ dispositions. What’s more, because the condition was becoming perfect, personal historiography could rise and develop. Faced with above-mentioned academic background, Fan didn’t follow his ancestors’ methods any longer in the study of history. Instead, he pertinently extracted referential contents from previous history and subsumed them into the core of historical monographs by taking political affairs at that time as a point of penetration and taking social reality as a basis.Next, as a historical work, the historical values of Tang Jian can not be ignored. The second part of this thesis mainly discusses this book from its unique historical thought and selection of historical data. The book Tang Jian, compiled by Fan Zuyu, took emperorsas direct readers and presented books to the emperors combing with the way of teaching textbooks. Thus, it emphasized on highlighting the expostulate to emperors. By succeeding the purpose of Si Maguang to compile Zi Zhi Tong Jian, Fan fully showed his intention of taking history as a mirror. Moreover, he payed more attention to combine with historical study to achieve the protection of ceremonial pomp of Confucians and imperial status. The book was compiled during the period of struggles between the new Party and the old Party, so it can be seen that the book reflected the New Party which asserted political reform in the aspect of the selection of historical data.Thirdly, the author discusses Tang Jianfrom the aspect of literary values that have been ignored for a long time, which is the key point and innovation of this thesis. This part mainly discusses this book’s literary characteristics from four aspects: conception, organization, rhetoric, sentence patterns. Firstly, in terms of conception, it has following characteristics: “views are definite, key points are outstanding”; “innovative and out of convention”; “words are sharp and the author are outspoken”. Its organization is methodical but also sleek and it has its own style. As for rhetoric, it cites large quantities of classics and appropriate metaphors. Its sentence patterns are variable and its words are exquisite and fitting.