On Female Beauty In Qin And Han Dynasties In The Dimension Of Western Body Theories

It is significant to dissect the female beauty conditions and promulgate its laws and evolutionary characteristics in Qin and Han dynasties which are not only a starting point of the development of female beauty concepts in the feudal societies but also a formal establishment of the mainstream concepts of female beauty in Chinese feudal societies while reviewing the overall rules and characteristics. This paper, adopting the modern and contemporary Western Body Theories as the theoretical angle of view, makes efforts to explore and display in the new dimension ideological roots, developing sources and courses, essential characteristics of Chinese ancient female beauty represented by female beauty in Qin and Han Dynasties as well as their complicated relationship with politics, social conditions, ideological and cultural factors so as to deepen historical cognition on Chinese ancient female beauty.The full text divides into seven parts in all, including the introductory remarks, five-chapter main body and conclusion.The introductory marks point out that this research on ancient female beauty carries prominent practical and theoretical significances. It goes without saying that female beauty has been a striking cultural phenomenon of contemporary era, just as those experts said "Female beauty has vaulted into the most important aesthetic object of our times." "Nowadays, the time of studying Classic of Poetry, A Dream of Red Mansions and the Shakespeare's has gone away, the real aestheticism has slipped into the fields such as supermarket, central street parks, female bodies, advertisement and McDonalds and so on " Therefore, not only for the interest of adaptation to and generalization of this current historical tendency but also the aim of criticizing, rectifying and guiding it, it turns out significant to do a further research into the development of aesthetic concepts of ancient female beauty, trace back its evolutionary patterns in the Chinese history and locate its inherent laws.Concretely speaking, studies on female beauty in Qin and Han dynasties has at least the following significances: first, aesthetic significance--based on a historical section of this special and important stage and through a deep, thorough and multi-angled analysis, this paper makes endeavors to accurately grasp the keynote and essence of female beauty concepts in the ancient China so as to provide with a certain aesthetic reference to a comprehensive understanding of historical course of traditional female beauty concepts of China; Second, historical and cultural significances are as follows: Qin and Han dynasties are a time in which the Confucianism thoughts were brought into a full social play, a time when Taoism arose as the times required and achieved its first developmental peak and a time that Buddhism took shape and began to exert influence to China's ancient female beauty. The above ideological systems conflicting, supplementing and coexisting with each other, giving an initial collective performance in terms of patterns and concepts of female beauty, enable this paper to penetrate into the core domains of China's ancient society, ideology and culture and make a lateral observation and unique analysis to some related questions; Third, comparative vision and methodological significances: the penetration from the angle of western modern and contemporary Body Theories enable this paper to assume a fresher and closer understanding of the conditions and concepts of China's ancient female beauty, play a role of mutual reference between Chinese and Western thoughts as well as mutual justification between ancient and present systems, and develop the depth and breadth of the research on female beauty.The introductory remarks still point out that by means of analyzing the research approaches and state quo and combining theoretical and practical demands, this paper tries to make certain theoretical innovation in the following several aspects: firstly, this paper adopts an angle of modem and contemporary Western Body Theories, which is a brand new angle to the research on China's ancient female beauty. Besides, this paper employs comparative and contrasting method covering the comparisons and contrasts between ancient times and modern times, China and West, that is, between "Classic of Poetry" and "Chu Elegies", between pre-Qin times and Qin-Han dynasties, between Qin-Han times and Song-Ming times, between western and Chinese Body concepts, between modern and contemporary Western Body theories and ancient Western Body theories, which are one of characteristics in terms of the research angle in this paper; Secondly, in terms of the emphasis and focus, this paper attaches special importance to the aesthetic approach to female beauty research, where there have been rare systematic reference, even none, to the fields of aesthetics emergence, subjects, categories, and creation of feminine beauty concerned in the theoretical circle. This has left behind a certain space for this paper to explore.The first chapter provides a thorough analysis of the evolutionary course and theoretical characteristics of modern and contemporary Western Body Theories. The article first points out that Body is a carrier of female beauty while Body Theories had surmounted the language logic frame, with the characteristic of "being economical", "providing a more amiable and intrinsic cognitive approach than enlightenment rationality which has fully suffered from condemnation currently". Next, this paper analyzes the four prominent features of modern and contemporary Western Body Theories—revolutionary and critical nature of the ideological precondition, modern and postmodern nature of social background, marginalized processing to the function and role of human souls and centralized concern with human body regarding theoretical characteristics, comprehensiveness and universality in terms of developmental and distributional domains. Meanwhile, this paper also analyzed the following three prominent dimensions of modern and contemporary Western Body Theories: Nietzsche's bodily activeness dimension, Michel Foucault's bodily passiveness dimension and Merleau-Ponty's dimension from the relation of body and arts. This chapter finally makes a contrast between ancient and modern western Body Theories by putting modern and contemporary Western Body Theories into a historical and theoretical coordinates of Chinese and Western Body Theories, conducting a further research.Second chapter probes into the conditions of female beauty prior to Qin Dynasty so as to make a historical observation and penetration into the female beauty in Qin-Han stage from the perspective of developmental origins and longitudinal contrast. This part first analyzes the generation of aesthetic awareness of female beauty and points out the universal and individual factors contributing to the generation of aesthetic awareness of female beauty. Next, theoretical dissection is made about the female beauty images and concepts of Pre-Qin time, including the textual research and discrimination of prehistoric conditions of female beauty at the initial period of female beauty in many ways as well as observation of female beauty in Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States time, presenting that historically constructed by schools like the Confucianism, Taoism, Fa, Mo etc., the patterns and concepts of female beauty in Pre-Qin time formed a complicated ideological structures and theoretical domains in its developmental course. It also analyzes the relations between the concepts of Yin-Yang, Confucianism, patriarchy and matriarchy. It finally points out that reviewing the conditions of female beauty prior to Qin Dynasty by means of modern and contemporary Western Body Theories unfolds a comparatively free body and initiative beauty, complete with four features of female initiative body prior to Qin Dynasty, analyzing the relations among civilization, freedom and female body and claiming that the slavery system had decided the activity space, body trend and the degree of freedom of the female, which were no longer subjective, initiative and free, suffering all sorts of limitations from civilization.Third Chapter concerns with the conditions of female beauty of Qin and Han dynasties from the point of view of female images and conceptual knowledge about females. It first analyzes the female images of Qin-Han period, pointing out that female beauty at the beginning of feudal society is characterized by the tendency to Content Beauty and on the other hand Form Beauty displayed a striking inheritance from Chu Culture. The article then analyzes the formation and development of female beauty concepts during Qin and Han Dynasties, ranging from the relations between Huang Lao Thoughts at the beginning of Han Dynasty and female beauty, to the switch of views on females after Emperor Wu from "Lun" to "Gang", to two orientations brought by Taoism and dual analysis of relations between Buddhism and Female Beauty. Third Section analyzes the establishment of feudal mainstream concepts, of female beauty comprising five foundations of their establishment. The paper then analyzes the bidirectional expansion and establishment of the mainstream concepts of female beauty including the establishment of Content Beauty as "gentle and honest", the relations between the establishment of the selection system for imperial empresses and concubines and the tradition of "taking big, healthy, full and round as beautiful" as well as the establishment of the tradition of "taking slim, delicate, soft and weak as beautiful", etc. This chapter finally analyzes the strictly limited female body and passive beauty in Qin and Han dynasties, and exposes the fact that under the gaze of "authoritative eyes", female bodies in Qin and Han time assumed four kinds of passive consciousness: bodily ownership consciousness, bodily tool consciousness, bodily restless consciousness as well as bodily Confucianism consciousness, moreover, the concept of chastity starting to become "Body Idiom". A brief contrast between Qin-Han females and Song-Ming females is made in the vision of Michel Foucault's pedigree.Forth Chapter makes a analysis of the inherent contradictions combined with aesthetic study. It first points out that there existed two confronting aesthetic subjects of female beauty between Confucianism and Taoism, which inherited the principles of matriarchy and patriarchy respectively in the tendency, presenting a prominent tertiary contradictions in concepts—contradiction between mind and body, contradiction between contending naturalization and socialization, contradiction between emphasis on pure female beauty and on female virtue. This paper then analyzes the important categories of female beauty in Qin and Han dynasties, such as "looks", "gentle and submissive", "beautiful" and "ugly", "natural" and "dressing up "and so on, towards which Confucianism and Taoism took different attitudes, either affirmation or denial, transformation or use, in a word, with their own characteristic theoretical acceptation and interpretation. Third Section analyzes four aesthetic laws in the appreciation of female beauty in ancient China: a psychological tendency to hold the Nature in awe and veneration, a harmonious principle, a strong loving awareness, and a pursuit of males for inherent life force presented by aesthetic subjects in the course of appreciating females. This section analyzes three obstacles in the appreciation of female beauty in ancient China: lack of aesthetic broadmindedness, mixture of beauty and kindness, and difficulty of narrowing down male power. This chapter finally analyzes the female body full of contradiction in Qin-Han dynasties and motley beauty, including the contradiction between diversification of female body patterns in terms of time and the limitation and reduction of female beauty and female body shapes in terms of space as well as the roots of this contradiction in people's thoughts and self.Fifth Chapter conducts research into the conditions of female body and creation of female beauty in Qin-Han dynasties. The first three chapters deal with the body conditions in Qin and Han dynasties: there were severe stipulation and limitation on bodily trend and space in the name of politics and military in Qin Dynasty; the control over body became increased in terms of ideology and concepts in Han Dynasty, for instance, ontological processing was conducted in Chun Qiu Fan Lu; emphasis was reiterated on the social nature of body in Bai Hu Tong; females were instructed to manage their bodies well by the female sage's tone in Female Warned; the subordinate nature of female bodies got propagated by means of examples and female typology in Lie Nu Zhuan; at the same time, certain explorations were carried on to bodily properties in the folks and individual lives during Han Dynasty, including the generation of Taoism which assumes a profound ontological significance and the popularity of sexual skills which had common ground with Confucianism, etc. Fourth Section analyzes the body tracks during the creation of female beauty: aesthetic education of female body beauty characterized by "otherness" , female makeup techniques regarding technical body and costume culture, and artistic creation of female beauty with respect to bodily naturalization. This paper points out that almost all sorts of stipulations and instructions on female beauty were mainly set up by Confucianism while artistic creation of the naturalization of female beauty had close relations to Taoism and its thoughts. Therefore, female beauty in ancient China was stipulated in creation and created in stipulation.Last Part makes reflections or reconsideration upon female beauty in Qin and Han dynasties in a broader vision, embracing the cross-culture inquiry of female universal failure from humanists and self-discipline of female beauty in the contemporary call for freedom and liberation. This paper points out that in order to endow female beauty with independence and liberation, Confucianism influence and patriarchic tendency should be partly eliminated whereas resources from Taoism and matriarchal tendency better introduced and absorbed, leading to economic and political independence and liberation and eventually towards to aesthetic self-discipline.