A Study On The Literary Thought Of The Northern Dynasties

The object of this study is the literary thought of the Northern Dynasties. This paper combines the historical document with theoretical analysis, and employs the comparison between the Southern and Northern Dynasties and historical longitudinal comparison, for the purpose of finding out the origin, the connotation, the historical value as well as the influence of some important theoretical questions and laying solid foundations for making comprehensive, systematic and profound appraisal of the literary thought of the Northern Dynasties.Chapter One discusses the mentalities of literators of the Northern Dynasties with the grand national fusion as social background and the vicissitude of literary ideology by separately inspecting the nationality policy and the cultural policy of the Xianbei rulers of the Northern Wei Dynasty time, the Eastern Wei Dynasty and the Northern Qi Dynasty time as well as the Western Wei Dynasty and the Northern Zhou Dynasty time and their respective influence on the mentalities of the literators, and traced the historical course of the vicissitude of literary ideology.Chapter Two focuses on Yang Yin's article "On literators 'morals " and the famous thinker at that time Yan Zhitui's opinions concerned. With intense realistic criticism, the article " On literators 'morals " by Yang Yin is directed against the brutal realpolitik, but is simultaneously also brimming with the cultural selfish departmentalism. Another scholar Yan Zhitui maintains that the inherent law of literary creation itself inevitably leads to haughtiness and arrogance of literators, that is to say, Yan employed sensibilities, the emotional pattern to establish a more stable isologous relationship between literature and morals, creating a necessary condition for the emergence of the theory that "the style shows the man", i.e. the style of writing should be in accordance with the literator's morals in Sui and Tang Dynasties.Chapter Three looks into Emperor Xiaowen's viewpoint on the question of "refinedness and nature" and Western Wei Dynasty scholar Liu Qiu's opinion concerned. Emperor Xiaowen explicitly urges that refinedness and nature should be paid equal attention to in literary creation, showing the direction for literary development. Liu Qiu advocates that writers are expected to restore the ancient writing style, but not to be bigoted to it, valuing the current fashion without being affected by the prevalent abuse.Chapter Four mainly inspects the Northern Dynasties' acceptance of the Southern Dynasty rules of tonal pattern. The literators accept the theory of the four tones with enormous enthusiasm. Positively from respective angle, some question the theory to dispel doubt, and some make efforts to smoothen the application of it. This paper holds that the literators in the Northern Dynasties share the same beautiful poetic aesthetic idea with those in the Southern Dynasties.Chapter Five mainly discusses the Northern Zhou Dynasty Prince You and the renowned writer Yuxin's ideas about literature. Prince You advocates articles should both serve politics to improve folk custom and give attention to feelings disposition, and be the mixture of social value and aesthetic taste. He stresses that literature must express rich deep emotion and profound thought. The literary thought of Yu Xin is characterized as fusing the northern and southern writing styles to have something unique.