Study On REN Fang

REN Fang, descended from a noble family in Bo chang District, Le an County, Shan Dong province. Following the East Jin dynasty all his older generations had settled down in Bo chang County established in South gun State, which is now the city of Yang zhou. REN Fang's mother was also born of a distinguished family surnamed PEI in Wen xi County, Shan Dong province. Those royal figures such as prince XIAO Chang-Mao, XIAO Zi-Liang and PEI Zi-Ye were REN Fang's cousins. Because his high family status and frequent contact with as well as intimate relationship with patricians REN Fang was highly appreciated by them and therefore enjoyed very high reputation. REN Fang had another name Yan -Sheng. " Fang" in the language of the country of Qi implied that REN Fang has noble origin and "Sheng" indicated merging of REN-surnamed Family and ordinary families in the south. Both "Fang" and "Sheng" mean "the beginning", which seems to indicate that REN-surnamed Family had religious belief in Buddhism. " Yan" in the older times signifies a man's good-looking appearance. REN Fang's infant name is A Dui. "Dui" embraced their family members' hope and expectations towards REN Fang, who was later respectfully addressed as REN Zhong-Cheng for the reason that in the Liang dynasty ruled by emperor Wu he was appointed Yu Shi Zhong Chen, a position at that time only the noble families were qualified for.High family status, along with showing filial respects and duties, being diligent and having good appearance, enabled REN Fang to gain the local people's praise and supports, which made him hold power in positions changing from an inferior official of the state, to Xiu Cai conferred to those who had passed the imperial examination at the county level in the ancient China, then to Xue Guan in charge of scholastic affairs. However, during the entire Song dynasty REN Fang had extremely low positions with few salaries until the Qi dynasty when he repeatedly obtained promotion due to appreciations and recognitions from WANG Jian and XIAO Zi-Liang. Because of suspicion and jealousy of Emperor Ming in the Qi dynasty as well as the loss of supports from WANG Jian and XIAO Zi-Liang due to their failures in political struggles and their successive deaths, REN Fang was chronically put in a very unimportant position. Under such circumstances, REN Fang had no choice but to serve Eunuch MEI Chong-Er with repressed disgrace. Up to the time when Emperor Wu established the country of Liang, REN Fang, as the old friend of Emperor Wu made in the XIAO Zi-Liang's official residence, was therefore given an important position.Since the Song dynasty REN Fang has been involved in extensively social activities. A case in point is that REN Fang participated in nearly all the influential groups of literati in the Qi- and Liang- dynasties. Included in the REN Fang's intercourse circles are: (1) noble families in the North and families with inferior social status in the South, and (2) important officials and recluses. What most deserves esteem is that REN Fang through his own influences and power promoted and cultivated large numbers of young low-born intellectuals, who had significant and far-reaching effects on the political and literary innovations in the Liang dynasty. As a typical representative of literati who were enthusiastic about social activities in the Qi- and Liang- dynasties, REN Fang received controversial appraisals from the contemporaries, of whom LIU Xiao-Biao even wrote a terribly famous article entitled on Breaking off a Friendship-targeting the REN Fang's social activities. We have conducted investigations into REN Fang's lifelong social activities, which were considered to at least produce the following effects: (1) facilitating and promoting merging of families from the South and the North; (2) enhancing communications between celebrities and recluses; (3) promoting academic advancement; and (4) promoting the innovations of poesy or poetry.REN Fang, a historian in the Qi- and Liang- dynasties, once served as Emperor Wu's historiographer whereas no records are available to confirm that REN Fang had written canonical history. Those who lived after him merely knew that REN Fang had written or compiled geographical books or biographies. The details about biographies remain unknown while geographical books can provide some useful information or clues. By investigating and recording REN Fang's bibliography of geographical books from bibliographical books in the Sui- and Tang- dynasties. REN Fang's geography, largely classified as chorography and directly affected by Wang Jian and Lu Teng, synthesized the piths of geography in the Han-, Jin-, Song-, Qi- dynasties as well as those in the South and in the North.KEN Fang was a bibliographer with great accomplishment. Although his family had fallen into poverty Ren Fang started to serve as Bo shi at the age of 16, transcribing or recording books until the time he died in Xin An when in power. Within over thirty years, REN Fang had collected more than ten thousand volumes of books and delved into catalogs, including Four-Part Catalog and Seven-Part Catalog. At that time, delving into catalogs had become a trend or vogue. Since he had made great efforts in collecting and arranging books REN Fang was appointed to collect books in the initial stage of establishment of the country of Liang and compiled the first bibliography in the Liang dynasty entitled Tian Jian Five-Year Mi Ge Four-Part bibliography, which had significant effects on offspring.REN Fang was a literature theoretician in the Liang dynasty and had the works Wen zhang Yuan qi handed down. This works was considered to be a fake one by the people living in the Qing dynasty but their adduced evidence was unjustifiable. However, we can adduce six items of evidence to demonstrate that extant Wen zhang Yuan qi was largely in accordance with its original version. By making investigations into the meanings of"Wen zhang", "Yuan qi" and "Shi", we know that this book was completed during the period when Wen zhang theory had been highly developed in the South dynasty. Wen zhang Yuan qi summarized bibliographical fruits of anthologies since the Han dynasty, absorbed Yuan qi thoughts of Buddhism, generalized eighty-four literary styles, and showed their initial origin. Wen zhang Yuan qi deems that a majority of literary styles occurred in the Han dynasty, which is a very advanced idea of literary styles for the reason that it is closest to the fact about the occurrence of literary styles when compared with the theory that literary styles originated from Six-Jin and Zhan Guo. At that time, under the circumstances where Literary Theory are in sharp conflict with Jin Xue, Wen zhang Yuan qi's dissemination of his theory about the origin of literary styles exhibited the independence of literary theory. Wen zhang Yuan qi continued to use the practice of literary theory in the South dynasty, remained individual or personal anthologies and their names, which provided precious clues for us to conduct in-depth research into personal anthologies since the Hart dynasty and was able to mutually confirm personal anthologies in Shi Pin and Wen xin Diao long. Wen zhang Yuan qi's classification in terms of compiling catalogues paid attention to the forms but not to the contents of literary styles. In addition, a total of eighty-four literary styles were included in one-grade catalogue classification. Although Wen zhang Yuan qi was considered to have this and that deficiency by those who lived after REN Fang, it indeed represented the highest achievement in the area of literary styles of that time, which presented the basis of classification of literary styles for XIAO Tong's Anthology and gave inspiration for LIU Xie's establishment of the thoughts about the origin of literary styles. What deserves our attention is that REN Fang's theory of the origin of literary styles had had far-reaching effects on the offspring and that its influence even extended to the Qing dynasty. Therefore, we can find out the developmental course of theory of the origin of literary styles according to REN Fang's influences on the later dynasties. We can subdivide literary styles into the following four types: (1) Theory about explanations for the names of literary styles; (2) Theory about the origin of literary styles; (3) Theory about anthology; and (4) Theory about literary appreciation. REN Fang's academic status in the area of literary theory was quite obvious and therefore he can be considered the founder of theory about the origin of literary styles.REN Fang was a representative poet in the Qi-Liang poetical circles and the remarkable feature of his poems is to cite literary quotations, which can not be easily detected from his extant poems while Shu Yi Ji has provided us with some related clues. REN Fang completely differs from SHENG Yue in literary quotation. Three-Simpleness Theory advanced by SHENG Yue emphasized that the literary quotations cited in the poems should be common and easily comprehended and accepted by others. However, the literay quotations cited by REN Fang in his poems are primarily derived from uncommon chorography and novels. Based on the information or clues supplied by Shi Pi and Preface to the History of Literature in History of South-Qi, we can further find out another poetic school following REN Fang during the Qi-Liang period, which mainly consists of such poets as XIE Chao-Zong, QIU Ling-Ju, LIU Xiang, TAN Chao, ZHONG Xian, YAN Ze, GU Ze-Xin, WANG Rong, LIU Hui, QIU Chi, LIU Bao, LIU Xiao-Zhuo, WANG Seng-Yu, etc. It was found that literary citation begins from the Jian An period for the mere purpose of more explicitly narrating and expressing one's feelings and emotions at that time. Fu Xie and Ying Mao in the Jin dynasty progressed to directly introduce literary quotations into poems. Yan Yin-Zhi and Xie Zhuang in the Song dynasty are more rigorous in literary citation, thereby making it more and more academic. During the Qi-Liang dynasty due to lack of being chronically influenced by Jing Learning REN Fang and his devoted followers tend to cited some literary quotations from outside Jin and Shi. On one hand, the REN Fang poetic school seeks for innovative approaches on the basis of returing to historical tradition. On the other hand, the SHENG Yue poetic school breaks through the old-styled poem's obstacles by learning folksongs and obsorbing extraneous or foreign Rhyme Theory. What SHENG Yue and REN Fang represents are two types of innovative trends in the Five-Yan poem since the Song dynasty, which echo with two sorts of worldwide medieval literary innovations. Not until the later stage of the Liang dynasty did these two trends merge, which eventually brought about thorough innovations of the Five-Yan poem from content to form, thereby resulting in the birth of the Gong-Ti poem. Therefore, research into the REN Fang poetic school is extraordinarily meaningful today.REN bi possessed high reputation. In the South dynasty, the conception "bi" was widely used but its meaning still remained vague. When putting bi into Yan bi, Dao bi, Shi bi, and Wen bi to distinguish bi's meanings, we know that bi contains all the characters or letters other than written language, history, official documents, and poems. Only the word "Wen bi" had the vaguest meaning. Virtually, Wen bi was just a consistently used parlance and had no fixed meaning at all. Through these investigations we also know that REN bi is the opposite conception to REN shi, and that it contains all the literary styles in REN Fang's works except for poems. REN bi has strong functions in narration and argumentation, conveys very strong emotions and feelings, and has flexible and abundant forms in citing literary quotations. The style of REN bi is directly affected by Fu Xie and Wang Jian, and has significant effect on Wei Shou in the North Qi dynasty and YU Xin in the Chen dynasty. From the perspective of Pi wen's development, REN bi is the turning point of development from Pin wen which excessively pursued parallelism and literary citations in the Song dynasty to Xu Yu Ti in the Chen dynasty, which plays an important role in promoting the further development of Pi wen. From the perspective of worldwide medieval literary, Ri bi aptly indicates the trends to merge Center Literay Style and Margin Literary Style.The dissertation Study on REN Fang, with the entire content of the body presented above, includes eight volumes and twenty-nine chapters. In each chapter I have solved at least one issue and each result is original or creative without any plagiarism or hackneyed ideas.