A Study Of The Tang And Five Dynasties Taoist Story

The Taoist story is a typical genre of religious literature and accordingly possesses a dual nature of religion and literature. According to the complexity of text, the Taoist stories can be differentiated into two subcategories in the wide and narrow senses. The research object of my thesis is primarily the subcategory of Taoist story, in the narrow sense, whose purpose is preaching tenets and teaching believers. Against the unprecedented background of advocating Taoism by the Li Tang Dynasty, the Taoist story developed into a full-blown scene step by step during the Tang and Five Dynasties periods. Du Guangting, an ex-official in the Qian Shu ('Former Shu') dynasty, epitomized the evolution of the Taoist story in the course of almost three and a half centuries. By a clear and definite standard for choice, I have comprehensively collected and criticized Tang and Five Dynasties Taoist stories so as to discover the trajectory and various characteristics of the evolution of the genre of Taoist story. Also, an all-around study is focused on the case of Du Guangting from the viewpoints of religion, literature, history, philology etc. The thesis includes the introduction, seven chapters, epilogue and appendix. The part that begins with Chapter 2 and ends with Chapter 7 is central of the whole of its text.Chapter 2, 'Du Guangting and his writing of Taoist stories', is a thorough investigation and analysis of Du Guangting's life, magic thought, scholarship etc. In its last section I makes a survey of Du guangting's Taoist stories, of which five will be further, specially studied later and the rest has been almost explained.From Chapter 3 to Chapter 7, a special research is made on the five comparatively important Taoist stories of Du Guangting's. In each chapter, on the principle of avoiding a shallow, skin-deep depiction, I spare no effort to make a precise and deep research. By and large, the contents of each chapter are arranged thus: the beginning sections are devoted to a detailed examination and criticism of the edition, recordation, authenticity etc. of the Taoist story in question; in the following sections, the social background of writing, purpose of compilation, source of material etc. of the same story are analyzed; the last section is a deep discussion on its main contents and features to illuminate its meaning and connotation of religious literature. Precisely speaking, the construction of the Yongcheng jixian lu and the pedigree of the fairies referred to in it are calculated; the analysis of the Shenxian ganyu zhuan presents the narrative mode of the human feeling the immortal being; in the study of Xianzhuanshiyi, I investigate the contents of the magics in the story; as to the Luyiji, I explain its colour of auspicious sign and prophecy; besides, I expound the narrative character of the Daojiao lingyan ji and the opinion of retributions for the good and the evil represented in it. I hope that these researches would be conducive to understanding the important Taoist stories of Du Guangting.