A Multidimensional Study Of Traveling Literature In The Late Ming Dynasty

Ancient Chinese prose has existed since ancient times. Academic prose, philosophical prose and historical prose all prospered at certain stage of history except for travel prose. The reason is closely related to such factors as the lack of a clear stylistic awareness of ancient Chinese prose, the limited knowledge of the nature and the insurmountable difficulties and hardships during the travel at that time, and so on. The first complete travel prose didn’t show up until Fengshan Yi Ji by Ma Dibo was published in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Thereafter, a series of landscape travel prose by Liu Zongyuan in Tang Dynasty marked the advent of mature period of travel prose composition. The ancient travel prose has experienced poet travel prose in Tang and philosopher travel prose in Song, and reached its peak in the mid-late Ming dynasty in the form of travelogues and special travel prose respectively.This dissertation works over the travel notes in the late Ming Dynasty, and presents it from different perspectives-content, form, aesthetic, culture, scientific research and philosophieren, seeking to explore the new changes of the travel notes in the late Ming Dynasty, to understand the far-reaching impact on the travel notes writing from twentieth century till today. More importantly, this dissertation has, intensively and multi-dimensionally, conducted a thorough research on the travel notes in the late Ming to search for the aesthetic experience and disciplines with traditional Chinese culture features, which is believed to benefit the Chinese travel notes research, and to provide important cultural reference to today’s tourism activities.This dissertation consists of an introduction part and five chapters. The introduction part clarifies the definitions of the Late Ming Dynasty and the Travel Notes, overviews the development history of ancient Chinese travel notes and presents the research survey of the travel notes in the late Ming dynasty. Chapter 1,The Cause and Classification of the Flourishing Travel Notes in Late Ming Dynasty,analyses the influencing factors of why travel notes dominated the late Ming dynasty by digging into the deep roots of the phenomena, attributing which to the ardent love of late Ming dynasty poets to nature, the then prosperous economy and transportation as well as the prevailing trend of travel. Moreover, this dissertation makes a tentative classification of travel notes in late Ming dynasty into three:familiar essay, scenery essay and diaristic essay. Chapter 2,The Development and Innovation of the Travel Notes’Theme and Form in the Late Ming Dynasty, from the dimensions of space and literary form, mainly focuses on the tremendous development of the themes, among which detailed analysis is given to travels, such as that to well-known mountains and rivers, the brilliance and magnificence in Beijing and Nanjing, the variety of scenery picture in the native places and the exotic frontier travel notes. In addition, the innovation of the literary forms in the travel notes has been fully discussed. Chapter 3, The Aesthetic Pursuit and Style in The Travel Notes in Late Ming Dynasty, analyses many writers and their works as well as the writing styles from an aesthetic perspective. It is believed that the diversity of aesthetic pursuit of travel notes can be divided into five types:the first aesthetic pursuit is sincerity, spirituality and inner feelings represented by the school of Gong An and Jing Ling. The second is the pursuit of truth, reality and objectivism represented by Xu Xiake and Wang Shixing. The third type is that of affluence, luxury and revel represented by Zhang Dai. The fourth one is the jocose genre of cynicism represented by Wang Siren. The last is the aesthetic pursuit that lies in the special hobby of miniature landscape, namely, the refinement and delicateness of garden art. Chapter 4, The Travel Notes in Late Ming and the Culture of Ming Dynasty, from the perspective of culture attention, besides the description of the travels, discusses thoroughly the scholars’daily life such as tea-tasting and drinking, poetic entertaining and chess playing in the travel notes, the festivals and folk costumes reflected in Ming dynasty, the human history in the landscape and the manifestation of many other fields embodied in the society and so on, to reveal the cognitive value of the colorful social life that the travel notes displayed for readers. Chapter 5, The Inner World of Travel Notes and Scholars in Late Ming Dynasty, inspects the travel notes in late Ming from the perspective of philosophieren, trying to provide an in-depth analysis of the scholars’self-entertaining mentality and perceptions to life reflected in the notes in the late Ming. Meanwhile, this chapter is also concerned with the impacts of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism on travel notes writing in the late Ming Dynasty.The main research methods are as follows:firstly, on the basis of adequate collection and reading as well as evaluation and analysis of the travel notes in late Ming Dynasty, the author uses inductive method to explore genre innovation, aesthetic style change, inner world reflection and other regularity. Secondly, the author tries to extend the research dimensions by borrowing the research theories and methods to study the travel literature in late Ming Dynasty from a multi-disciplinary perspective, such as that of aesthetics, culturology, sociology, folklore, historiography, geography and archaeology.