On Taoism And The Ancient Chinese Popular Stories

There is a natural relationship between Taoism and the ancient Chinese popular stories, and that's a kind of precious material for researching Taoist culture. More and more scholars realize the important position of Taoism in Chinese culture. So the research on Taoist literature becomes hot topic and is profound and abundant. However there are some limitations in academic research at present. Firstly,' The former research followed the traditional way and focused on the extrinsic study such as: the rising of a kind of story type; Taoist thoughts in the story and its influence; the relationship between the subject of story and Taoist thoughts and so on. Secondly, There is scarcely any comparatively complete hold of Taoist stories in academic circle. What is even more dismay to the academic field lies in the fact that there is no research on this topic from longitudinal and horizontal perspectives, so the academic circle can't expound utterly the significance of literature and the religious characteristics of Taoist literature, as Taoism is worked as a kind of cultural system. This dissertation tries to fill the long-exiting gap in this field. Based on natural law and the will of people, a pair of key concepts in Taoism, and material connected with Taoist culture of worldly life in the popular stories, this dissertation deals with relationship between the development of Taoism and the shift of stories patterns from the longitudinal perspective, then explores the permeation of Taoism for the value of life and its influence upon Chinese traditional culture from the horizontal...