A Research On The Literary Thoughts Of The Classicists In Middle Qing Dynasty

This dissertation studies the literary thoughts of the classicists in middle Qing Dynasty which are neglected by the scholars on history of literature in the past. The study is put down roots on historical materials which are thoroughly collected and minutely analyzed and are rooted on their age, especially on the development of academic and literary activities in this age. We think the classicists in middle Qing Dynasty have the very important status in the history of literary thoughts in Qing Dynasty, because they most deeply apperceive the age spirit that is the rise of Confucian Intellectualism and are one of the basal power that shape the character of literary thoughts in middle and late Qing Dynasty.The exordium takes on two tasks. First it defines the subject of the dissertation. And then it expounds the essential standpoint, attitude and study method about this dissertation.The first chapter describes a general picture of classicists' academic and literary activities. The first section discusses the causation of rise and development of classicism in middle Qing Dynasty and descripes the schools and generationgs of classicists. The second section analyzes the classicists' study method and spirit.The second chapter analyzes the classicists' comprehension and meditation on ancient prose and parallelist prose. The first section researches into and analyzes the facts of hostility, conflict and mutual influence on prose thoughts between classicists and essayists in Tongcheng School. The work makes us ascertain the essential standpoint and value of classicists' prose thoughts. The second section concretely analyzes the classicists' comprehension and summarization on academic style. We analyze the classicists' opinions on the relation of argumentation, textual research and prose in the third section. In the fourth section we restudy the reconstructiong and development of the thoery of Wen and Bi in Qing Dynasty and we find Ling Tingkan is the first man who puts forward a new concept of Wen from its criterion, character, history and basis of theory.In the third chapter we discuss the distinctive parts in classicists' poetics thoughts. The first section is about the classicists' poetics theories of personal nature and emotions that come from Shen Deqian and Yuan Mei and are exerted and modified by classicists. In the second section we scan the classicists' views about the existence of learning and the relation between learning and personality in poetry. In the third section we discuss Jiao xun's doctrine of Xing Ling and doctrine of Xing Qing that is a example about how the argumentation can influence the literary thoughts.The fourth chapter is about the classicists' thoughts of Ci. We emphasize the syncretism of eyeshots of learning of Ci, poetics and classicism and that classicists stand on the standpoint of standpoint when they studu the learing of Ci.