A Study On Literature Of The Wen Family In Changzhou County

The Wen family of Changzhou County is a very influent cultural aristocratic family in Ming Dynasty. In more than two hundred years after the migration to Suzhou, this family inherited ten several generations, and has offered us numerous cultural celebrity, Wen Zhengming is their representative. They’ve achieved extraordinary achievement and won very high prestige in the fields of literature, calligraphy, painting, seal carving, garden designing and imperial civil service examination etc.This paper takes Wen Family’s literary creation as main object of study, after the systematically combs of the family’s source, inheritance and marital relations,elaborates this it’s main members’biography and the literary production in turns. This paper Emphatically discusses the family members’circumstances and point of view in different time and corresponding social background, as well as the reactions and influence of these factors to their poetry, prose, and even calligraphy and painting creation. Through the inspection of the this family’s several generation’s life paths, the life conditions and their mental journeys, seeks the inner world and the sentiments of the gentlemen who came from identical family in mid and late Ming Dynasty.This paper divides in five chapters. The first chapter traces Wen Family’s source and the evolution, its key point is the clearly defining of this family’s Suzhou lineage marital network and marries network, and briefly introduces the biography of all the members and the achievement of the members who have the talent in the fields of art and literature. We might see the developing process and path of a great family from its emerging to decline, and then discusses the inseparable relationship between the prosperity and decline of a family, and the chaging of the ouside world.The following four chapters, respectively elaborates the important members of the Wen family and their (mainly the literatural) achievements.The second chapter detailed discusses the biography and the poery, prose cration of Wen Hong, Wen Lin and Wen Sen, the second and third generation of Wen’s Suzhou lineage. Demonstrates prominently the image of pioneers of the family and their contribution to the establishment of the family tradition, their encouragement and impetus to the development of their decendants.The third chapter is this paper’s key chapter. It elaborates Wen Zhengming, the most famous and representative character of the family. Describes his biography baced on the truth of his growth environment, the gradually formation of his world outlook and the outlook on life, the contacts with the celebrites and his influence to his posterity and younger generation and so on, and then takes the region as the Fundamental unit to devides and discusses his friends making in his long life. As the poetry and prose creation, this chapter takes his poems which written on the paitings, describing the landscape, or took his feelings of circumstance and leisure time as the theme, and his prose reflecting his meticulous, elegant thoughts as the key point to discuss his literature achievement.The fourth chapter introduces, analyses and elaborates the life story and creation achievement of Wen Peng and Wen Jia, two sons of Wen Zhengming, and two sons of Wen Peng, Wen Zhaozhi and Wen Yuanfa. Regarding Peng and Jia, this chapter highlights their famous family and artistic background within the elaboration of their biography and prose creation. Regarding the brother of Zhaozhi and Yuanfa who slightly inferior in fame, this chapter puts the key point on their transmission of family inheritance, the reorganization and publication of the family cultural heritage, and the education of their descendants, then their influential role which links the preceding with the following in the family developing process has been highlighted.The fifth chapter takes Wen Zhenmeng and Wen Zhenheng, two sons of Wen Yuanfa as a key points, reorganizes and researches the experience and the correlative prose creation of the members of Wen family which lived in late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty. Points to reveal the style transformation of the family, namely the transformation from an elegant family to a loyal and heroic one. This characteristic, not only has manifested the close relationship between Wen family and the political power of Ming Dynasty after Wen Zhenmeng’s winning in the palace examination, moreover has also profoundly promulgates the reason of this family’s rapidly decline after the fall of Ming Dynasty.This paper takes the family member case analysis as a foundation, and the vein of the family’s development as a general outline, combs and discusses the entire process from this family’s producing to its decline, and takes the clansmen’s literary creation research as the turning point to explore the support strength of the family’s emerge and prosperity. This paper promulgates Wen family’s typical nature and the representation amongst the aristocratic family community in the southern Yangtze River area, as well as the significance which could profit the modern society.