Research On The Writings Of The Three Sages In The Later Han Dynasty And Their Literary Value

The Eastern Han Dynasty is an important stage in the development of Chinese literature,Especially the prose of the Eastern Han Dynasty,which developed further on the basis of the Western Han Dynasty.At this time,a number of critical literary works appeared,especially Wang Chong’s Lun Heng,Wang Fu’s Qian Fu Lun and Zhong Changtong’s Chang Yan.The three were listed as a joint biography in Fan Ye’s History of the Latter-Han Dynasty,and Han Yu wrote an essay for them in the Tang Dynasty,"Three Sages of the Later Han Dynasty",the title of "Three Sages in the Later Han Dynasty" comes from this.Throughout the Eastern Han Dynasty,Emperor Guangwu ascended the throne at the beginning of the early stage,and greatly promoted his theological thought of divination.In the period of Yuan Di,consorts and eunuchs came to power one after another,leading to the gradual corruption of the government,and the world became uneasy and turbulent.The three sages who lived in the three stages before,during and after the Eastern Han Dynasty witnessed the proliferation of ignorant theological superstitions,turbulent social living conditions,dark and corrupt political rule,and the encounter of scholars who had no way to promote themselves.They could only write books with indignation and criticize various ugly phenomena in society with cynicism.Therefore,their writings have certain research value.There are many individual studies on the three sages in the later Han Dynasty in academic circles,but the overall studies are few,and there is a lack of an overall perspective on the creative environment and background of the three sages.This paper intends to start with the regional background and time background of the life of the three sages in the later Han Dynasty,and based on the writings of the three sages,in order to explore the similarities and differences of the three sages in the later Han Dynasty.The full text is divided into three chapters:The first chapter is about local customs,political environment and the creation of the three sages.Starting from the regional culture and the background of the times in which the three sages lived,this chapter comprehensively analyzes the characteristics of the literary creation of the three sages and their relationship with local customs and political environment in combination with many factors such as their family background,personal temperament and friends.The second chapter is the criticism of the three sages of the later Han Dynasty on the world style and the scholar style.Because of the different backgrounds of their lives,the tendentiousness and exposure degree of their critical thoughts are different.First of all,from the criticism of the world style,Wang Chong mainly focused on the criticism of theological superstition and fundamentally denied theological superstition;Wang Fu’s atheism is compromise and incompleteness.In comparison,Zhong Changtong’s criticism is more comprehensive,thorough and ruthless.Secondly,judging from the criticism of the scholar style,the fate of Wang Chong’s soldiers comes down to fatalism;Wang Fu did not get rid of idealism;Zhong Changtong,on the other hand,showed a stronger heresy.The third chapter is the literary comparison of the writings of the three sages.The first section is the comparison of rhetorical devices in the writings of the three sages,which explores the similarities and differences in the writings of the three sages from three aspects: metaphor,comparison and quotation.The second section is the comparison of the parallel prose degree of the three sages’ writings,to understand the law of the development of article forms in the Eastern Han Dynasty.The conclusion is the value of the writings of the three sages in the history of literature.This paper explores their influence on later generations from three aspects:their creative motivation,literary theory and the concept of talents.