Comments Of Qu Sao And Literary Theory Of Han Dynasty

As an important coordinates of value of Chinese culture, Qu Sao, had ever a profound impact on the intellectuals of Han Dynasty, who regarded Qu Sao as a cultural symbol that is endowed with profound significance, viewed it as a huge emotional space, illuminated it from theirs' different perspectives with one's own understandings, and ended up writing a history of reception of Li Sao. For one thing, the intellectuals of different times interpreted Li Sao with literary concept of theirs' own eras; for another thing, Li Sao also affected the literary concept of each era in its own way. It must be noted that because every step of development of literary ideas bears the specifically historical footstep, so the history of reception of Li Sao is also inevitably engraved with mark of the age. Beginning with comments made on Qu Sao, this paper will make an in-depth analysis of the reasons of this phenomenon in term of philosophy, ideology, politic, and culture, and further reveal the history track of evolution of literary theory of Han Dynasty in order to provide new academic perspective to the study of literary thoughts of Han Dynasty.Chapter I, this paper will list a diachronic evaluation of Qu Yuan and his masterpieces offered by scholars in Han Dynasty, on the basis of which there will be an analysis concerning the importance of the debate over Qu Yuan and his works in the Chinese cultural academic history, summarization and explanation of the interrelationship between comments on Qu Sao and Han literary thoughts made from subjective and objective angles respectively and the consequent conclusion that Qu Sao, a tit for tat subject-focus debate with fresh views, spanning a particular length of time, exhibits the active picture of the literature in Han Dynasty and fully reflects the fundamental concept and characteristic of the literary thoughts of the age, as an example of literature criticism.Chapterâ…¡, the comments made by scholars of Han Dynasty towards Qu Sao have never stopped, but even been very fierce. There were many reasons, among which the internal conflict between Qu Sao's thoughts and traditional Confucianism is the utmost one. Whether Liu An's commendation or Yang Xiong's question, or whether Ban Gu's dissatisfaction or Wang Yi's refutation---all of them are inseparable from whether Qu Sao is in accordance with the norm of Confucian poetics. That Qu Sao was put into the discourse system of Poetry for illustrating this, is the key of resolving the relationship between them. Therefore, it is essential to make an in-depth comparison of them. Centering on the focal points of evaluation towards Qu Sao, we unfold the comparison between those two, that's, we contrast and analyze them in three aspects, say, the different literary ideas reflected from them, the different features demonstrated in works, and the different personality transmitted out in books, to unravel where the internal cause of different opinions to Qu Sao's evaluation by scholars of Han Dynasty, lies.Chapter III, Han Confucianism's becoming scriptural and ideological has placed Qu Sao Comments in a wild field of vision and has made them possess same characteristics of the Confucian classics. With the historical changes of the two Hans and the further analysis of the changes of the characteristics of the comment itself, we can spot the standard of literary creation, literary theory and literary activities of the scholars, which reflects the locus of the winding development of the Han literary thoughts, and which simultaneously shows the unique style possessed by the two Han Qu Sao Comments.Chapter IV, the evolution process of "poetry expresses minds and sentiments" to "poetry out of affection" is a process of Chinese literature's development from the naturalness to the consciousness, from the original pan-cultural art form to the self-contained art form. During this dynamic development process, we not only find the intrinsic necessity of its change, but also the twists and turns of its development. That whether it is a positive or questioning or negative evaluation process by Han Chinese people to Qu Sao is a testimony to the tortuosity of this development, a process of literary consciousness and intention to placing literature into a subordinated position of political ethics thoughts, and an alternating process of literature's self-conscious struggle and control. So from this, we can deeply appreciate the waxing and waning, and twists and turns between the passion and the will.Chapter V, from the criticism and acceptance process by scholars of Two Hans to Qu Sao, we not only can see the significant impact exerted by Qu Yuan to the inner spirit of those people, but also profoundly realize the spiritual evolution of those scholars, who lived under different political situation, of paying close attention to the survival and pursuing the existence of life. And Qu Yuan and its works have become the history reference by Han people in thinking about their life. Directed towards the life choice and settled way of life thought and made by Qu, under his actual situation of conflict between reality and ideal, Han scholars takes Qu Yuan with their different ways while producing their own deep thinking of existential meaning of life and choices of how to settle a stable life. Obliviously, Qu Yuan's unique spiritual presence, has effect on the psychological construct of internal culture of traditional Chinese literati, and has enriched the inner space and emotional soul of scholars of later generations.