A Study On The Complete Works

Quan Tang wen(《全唐文》),a complete prose literature of Tang Dynasty (618—906) and Five Dynasties (907—960), contains more than20000literary compositions of about3000named authors (plus those of several hundred anonymous writers). By the orders of the Emperor Jiaqing of Qing Dynasty, the compilation started from1808to1814in the Hanlin Academy before the original draft was turned over to Yangzhou for futher collation. Not until1816was Quan Tang wen officially published. As the largest general anthology of Tang prose, Quan Tang wen has been regarded as an indispensible document in academic research on the relevant historical period.This dissertation especially focuses on the process of compilation and textual value of the certain book.With the archives of Qing Dynasty published in recent years, Chapter One gives a minute description of the compilation and publication of Quan Tang wen, which illustrates the historical backgroud, the procedure and the members who attributed to the book. In Chapter Two, through the investigation of rare editions related to Quan Tang wen stored in public libraries, the author has identified the textual character of each edition and revealed relations among those manuscripts and transcriptions, thus offers some new materials for the academy.Chapter Three mainly discusses the stylistic rules and layout of Quan Tang wen, including the order of arrangement, the principal of textual collation, the modification of the particular character taboo in Qing Dynasty, etc. Based on a thorough survey into the documental source of each prose compiled in Quan Tang wen, the secord part of this chapter evaluates the gains and losses of the usage of belles-lettres, historical records, Yongle dadian(《永乐大典》),Buddhist Scripture and Taoist Canon.Chapter Four classifies the defect of Quan Tang wen into five types and analyses the primary reasons. According to the previous and personal studies, the author sorts out a list of the proses that were not written in the Tang or forged by later ages or included repeatly due to negligence.The last part gives a brief review of the influence of Quan\Tang wen.There are also three appendices involved. Appendix I is a book catalog of the materials generally cited in the compilation, with the intention of matching with the discussion in Chapter Three. Appendix Ⅱ provides a list of compositions which documental sources have not been defined yet. Appendix Ⅲ is a textual criticism of some remaining errors in Quan Tang wen.