Study On The Proverbs Fictions In The Song And Yuan Dynasties

Proverbs fiction is one of the six categories of novels proposed by Hu Ying Ling in the Ming Dynasty.From the literal point of view,the name contains a meaning of exhortation and regulation.From the content point of view,it roughly points to the “The Old Sayings Of Yan’ Family”,“Family instructions of Yuan Cai”,“Quan Shan Lu”,“Xing Xin Za Yan” and the like.Those fictions usually focus on self-cultivation,life and family management.And they are often recorded through the collection of philosophy and literature as well as epitaphs.Those fictions are short,and there generally don’t have long chapter or unnecessary descriptions.After the slow development in the Tang and the Five Dynasties,the Proverbs fictions encountered the outbreak period in the Song and Yuan Dynasties.According to preliminary statistics,during this period,there should be at least 76 proverbs fictions.All those works can be divided into three categories based on their contents: karma,self-cultivation,and family management.Among them,the karma becomes the most popular ones,and the contents are generally very similar.The plot of this kind of fictions is simple,usually they want to persuade the public to do good deeds,to persuade officials to do good governance.Most of those works are lost in the history.Most of the authors are unknown,and the known authors often are lowerclass people with little reputation.The self-cultivation fictions focus on moral and knowledge cultivation of the scholars,as well as on the experiences of methods of interaction with others,the official guidance,etc..Those works contains overlapping parts with the children’s books,official apothegms,and anecdotes.The family management fictions are mainly composed of works which contents are in accordance with family and traditional instructions.They also have same forms with those works.The distribution of the three categories of proverbs fictions in the Tang and Five Dynasties was quite different from that in the Song and Yuan Dynasties due to joint effects of social development and cultural development.In the naming perspective,there is often at least one character in the title which is related to traditional instructions or moral conducts and can be used to help us to identify whether a fiction that is already lost or not.The proverbs fictions in the Song and Yuan dynasty have their unique development backgrounds.They are the outcomes of resultant actions:the strengthening of the dissuasive consciousness,the projection of the confucianist spirit,the prosperity of the culture,the culture integration,and the combined effects of the religious ideology.As a case study object of the proverbs fictions in the Song and Yuan dynasty,“Zi Jing Bian(Self-Warning Series)”has its own unique value.Through the investigation of the distribution of its versions,we can found the peak printing period of “ Zi Jing Bian(Self-Warning Series)” is in the Ming Dynasty,and has close and continuous relations with several relatively important Ming Dynasty’s publications.According to the analysis of the characters in this book,we can define the range of celebrities and ministers most appreciated by the editors.And we could also investigate the famous politicians at that time.By means of analysis of the books cited in the book,we can approximately find the most familiar books of the author,and also,we could understand which books were more popular among the scholars.In terms of structure and classification,“ Zi Jing Bian(Self-Warning Series)” adopts a relatively rare two-layer directory structure,with trivial classifications and not strict logic.The order of its arrangement is influenced by the neoconfucianism’s self-cultivation and the ruling of the state.In the nomenclature of classification,“ Zi Jing Bian(Self-Warning Series)”breaks the traditional two-word format,appears to be out of order and reflects the randomness of compilation.As the first proverbial novel named Zi Jing(Self-Warning),“ Zi Jing Bian(Self-Warning Series)” initiated the tradition of selfdirected writing in moral self-cultivation proverbial novels,and had certain influence on later generations.