The Study Of Non-fictional Prose In Wei And Jin Dynasties

With non-fictional prose of Wei and Jin period as the research object, this thesis makes a plausible and conyincible explanation of its position in the history of Chinese ancient non-fictional prose by way of the ''New Logical Thinking Way" put forward by Prof. Wang Zhong-ling.The thesis contains three parts: introduction, main text and conclusion. The introduction gives a brief review of the research history, the current state, the method and the significance of the proposition. The main text contains five chapters in which the first two are general introduction and the last three deals with non-fictional prose in each period. In the first chapter, the author begins with the origin and evolution of the definition of Wen in ancient China, which roughly equals to the Western non-fictional prose, and then makes a summary of the development of the comprehension of the definition by the scholars after the May Forth Movement. At the end of the chapter, a historical and theoretical interpretation of the connotation of Chinese non-fictional prose that is confined to this paper is made. In the second chapter, the author first analyzes that it is the contradiction between the practical and literary language, which is the basic contradiction of prose, that propels prose forward and finally forms the two main styles of Chinese ancient non-fictional prose: the parallel style and the free style, and then makes a examination of the diachronic development of the intrinsic contradiction of prose. The third chapter is the study of non-fictional prose in Wei Dynasty which is a turning point of the development of the non-fictional prose. The intrinsic contradiction brings about a radical change in prose. Influenced by the flowery Fu in Han Dynasty, prose in Wei Dynasty, which tends to an ornamented style clearly taken by the Three Chaos, the Seven Intellectuals of Jian An, Ji Kang and Ruan Ji, gives rise to the aesthetic pursue of prose language in the Six Dynasties. The fourth chapter is the study of non-fictional prose in the West Jin Dynasty, which develops along the way of ornamentation which can be clearly seen in the works of Zhang Hua, Lu Ji, Lu Yun, and Pan Yue. The increasing flowery and ornamentation of the style in the West Dynasty is not only the requirement of the development of the genre, but also closely concerns with the environment in which intellectuals lived. The fifth chapter is the study of non-fictional prose in the East Jin Dynasty. The author holds the view that nothing develops along a single line and there must be lots of branch roads and roundabouts in the development. This is also the case of the development of prosewhich has not fully shown its advancement towards ornamentation in the East Jin Dynasty, but because of the special background, shows another aspect of itself: the fresh and natural style which makes prose in this period manifest totally different characteristics from the prose in Wei and the West Dynasties. Notes of Wang Xi-zhi, Travels of Hui Yuan, and prose of Tao Yuan-ming altogether make up the overall features in the period. The discussion of prose in each specific period manages to combine the development of the form of prose and the cultural mentality of intellectuals and the environment in which they live when dealing with specific writers. The conclusion further emphasizes that non-fictional prose is a kind of being which shows itself to us gradually. The contradiction between the practical and literary language forms two intrinsic determinations for prose: the practical aspect produces the free style and the literary aspects produces parallel style. The free style in the East Jin Dynasty represented by Tao Yuan-ming is only an episode of the main stream of the flowery trend of the whole period from Wei Dynasty to the Six Dynasties. Prose in Song Dynasty, one of the Six Dynasties, returns to the ornament style of West Jin Dynasty.