Jin And Southern Langya Wangs Family, Culture And Literature

As the highest family on the left bank of Changjiang River, the Wang family of Langya not only made great contribution on academic, literature, art, but also kept the high social status through ten generations in 300 years. It had the most influence and was the most typical culture family in the period. So the paper takes it as the object of study in order to understand the style and features of the old families'culture in that period and even the whole middle ancient ages'culture.The Paper is composed by three parts: introduction, the main text, the appendix. Introduction discusses the meaning and value of the paper and the present research situation. The main text consists of seven chapters.Chapter one discusses the source and lineage of the Wang family of Langya. The Wang family of Langya , as a huge family, had a lot of branches, but only the offspring of Wang Lan flourished, which made up the main part of the Wang family of Langya. As the Wang's family culture has close relations with the political status, knowing the change of its political status is necessary. The Wang's political status had a clear path in the Wei-Jin and the Southern Dynasties when the politics changed unceasingly. It promoted in the Wei-Jin period, achieved the peak in the beginning of the East Jin Dynasty, fell down gradually afterwards, rose again when the change of the Jin and Song Dynasties, waned in the Liang and Chen Dynasties.Chapter two researches the Wang's Confucian classics and history. The Wang had handed the Confucian classics down from generation to generation since the West Han Dynasty. Although in the two Jin dynasties when the Metaphysics was prosperous and in the Southern Dynasty when literature thrived, the members of the Wang had not left the Classics studies. They researched on the classical book such as Chun-Chiu, Zhou-Yi, Lun-Yu, Xiao-Jing and so on, especially in the Rites. They left lots of records of discussing rites. In this period, the Wang appeared some great scholars on ritual study, such as Wang Biao-zhi, Wang Jin-zhi, Wang Zhun-zhi, Wang Su and so on. Wang Jian in the Southern Qi Dynasty might be called the model of the Wang family who studied the Confucian classics of the Wang family. He was called a great master of the Confucian. He advocated the Confucian and played the vital role in the Confucian's revival process in the Southern Qi Dynasty. In addition, Wang Su, Wang Bao also pumped over the etiquette and political system in the Southern Dynasties to the Northern Dynasties. It not only caused the affect in the South, concurrently also profited from the North. In order to maintain family status of the family, the Wang always persisted upholding the Confucian tradition. It also was the basic reason that the Wang could continues without interruption. The Wang also paid attention to the development of history. They wrote the history positively. Their history books appeared the powerful mark of the hereditary scholar class and referred lots of the history departments. It promoted history prosperity at this time.Chapter three discusses the influence that Metaphysics exerts on the Wang's family culture. Under the Wei-Jin metaphysics ideological trend, the Wang complied with the time the tidal current and absorbed the new style of study positively which made the family culture to be more richly and colorful. Wang Rong in the West Jin Dynasty was the forerunner of the family's metaphysics, and Wang Yan enhanced the family's reputation by the Metaphysics at the same time. They enhanced the Wang family's prestige and the status enormously from Confucian to Metaphysics. More importantly, their opinions in the melting of Confucian and Metaphysics had a big influence on the family's thought. Since then, most of the offspring of the Wang family followed the family style. The East Jin Dynasty is the meridian of Metaphysics development. The metaphysics custom of the Wang family's manifested most greatly in this time. Under the influence of the Metaphysics, the Wang's nature, thought, temperament, the academic style and so on were all influenced by Metaphysics. In the Southern Dynasties, although Metaphysics was already feeble day after day, the bright metaphysics characteristic was still showed on the offspring of the Wang.Chapter four discusses the contribution that the Wang made to the development and boom of art in the Jin and southern dynasties. As the biggest literary and artistic family in that period, the Wang trained lots of artistes who had the very high attainments in calligraphy, drawing and music. Especially in calligraphy, the numbers and the achievements of the Wang's calligraphers is the miracle in the calligraphy history. The paper discussed the calligraphy creation and the books of the calligraphy theory, the drawing creation and the drawing theory, the accomplishment of music and the achievement of the musical creation and Yayue's construction.Chapter five researches the religious culture. The combination of religion and family was a main characteristic of culture in this period. The Wang had a very big tolerance in the culture, so for its religious belief, both Buddhism and Taoism was believed in. The Buddhism was a foreign religion, but the Wang participated in Buddhism's practices positively and also understood deeply in the Buddhist doctrines. They believed in Buddhism by generations, even having some monks in the family. The Wang was also a generational family that believed in Tian-shi Taoism. The family related with the Taoism in the period of Wang Ji in the West Han Dynasty at least. The Wang's Taoist belief in the Jin and southern dynasties were showed many aspects. The deep Taoism belief also had tremendous influence to the Wang family's marriage and culture. For example, they often mutually married with the generational Taoist family to maintain its belief to pass on from generation to generation. The successes they made in the handwriting and medicine had close relationship with this faith.Chapter six analyzes the literature creation of the Wang family in the Jin and southern dynasties. Because of the attention and training in the family, the Wang became one of the families that had the most writers in the Jin and southern dynasties. The Wang had three generations in the East Jin. Because of the changes of the ages, the politics environments and the social ideological trends, their literature had the different characteristics in the different stages: more political in the beginning of the East Jin; advocating the nature and mystery in the middle age; the diversification trend in the end. Wang Wei and Wang Sengda were the representative figures in the Liu Song Dynasty. Their literary views and the characters were discussed. The paper also discusses the leadership of Wang Jian in the initial period of the Qi Dynasty and the Yong-ming verse of Wang Rong. In the Liang Dynasty, such as Wang Jun, Wang Gui, Wang Xun, followed the trend closely, keeping the steps with the development of the main style. Their works embodied the prevalent system and style of that period. At the last, the paper discussed the great contribution that Wang Bao melting with northern and southern literature. In a word, the members of Wang became the mainstream literature characters at each time with the noble family status and own literary talent. They had the very tremendous influence in the literary world in the Jin and southern dynasties.Confusion summed up the Confucianism family style and the Xuan-Buddism-taoist mixed family learning. And the influence on the art, history and literature creation of the Wang family also was analyzed in this part in order to grasp the characteristics of the entire old family culture and literatures in the Middle Ages.