A Study Of The Eight-part Essay Criticism Of The Qianjia Era

The Eight-part Essay criticism of the Qianjia Era had been studied in this thesis,the opinion on Eight-part Essay criticism system from scholars of QianJia Era had been collected,sorted,concluded and then systematized,the theoretical system on Eight-part essay criticism including the stylistics,the writing theory and the writing method theory based on the previous work had been constructed.QianJia Era is the last times which changed from consolidation to declination in Chinese feudal dynasties and was also the most prosperous academic period in Qing dynasty,so it gets the name of "QianJia Science".The Orientation of Real Learning was made definite by the emperor at that times,the Eight-part Essay criticism had close relations with the times either from the social and political side or from the academic side,it was also the results of the academic prosperity of QianJia Era,this thesis was arranged in 6 chapters,the contents were listed in the following.The historical background of Eight-part Essay criticism of QianJia Era was briefed in chapter 1.In the 1st section,the cultural policy of real learning advocated by QianLong emperor was introduced,it was the cultural policy that created the academic prosperity of QianJia Era,so spectacular academic fetes of QianJia Era was described in 2nd section,qian-jia textual criticism including the thriving history,the reason for thriving,the philosophical connotations by Exegesis,the academic pursuits of Seeking Truth from Facts and also the malady were all given in this section,the reconciliation of Han and Song studied by Ruanyuan based on the understanding of the malady was also introduced.The main subject of the 3rd section is imperial examination.The Eight-part Essay Examination(the other name of imperial examination)had lasted for hundreds of years,especially from Ming To Qing dynasty,Many maladies had been found,the debate of cancellation or preservation of Eight-part Essay examination occurred at Qianlong Times,the examination system could not be scraped without better system for talent selection.To overcome the maladies of Eight-part Essay Examination,the real learning strategy was determined by the emperor,the corresponding examination policies were worked out and stated in several Decrees issued by Qianlong emperor,the goal of selecting the talent with real learning was emphasized,the effectiveness of Eight-part Essay examination was ensured by writing from correcting and changing,examination regularization and strict punishment of examination cheating.After the historical background introduction of QianJia Eight-part essay criticism,the general situation was briefly introduced in chapter 2.More attention was paid to learning than to Eight-part essay itself because of the advocating and emphasizing from the emperor and also the conscious selection from the scholars.The professionalism of scholars was also a key factor which made people that time payed less attention to Eight-part essay itself compared to the preceding Ming Dynasty,the eight-part essay was marginalized by academics,so the critics of eight-part essay and their monograph were seldom in Qianjia era.Most of the critics were scholars the first,some others were those who took the teaching of Eight-part essay as occupation,the masters or critics on Eight-part essay at that time and the Eight-part essay theory contributors were all called Eight-part essay critics.Since the Eight-part essay was not valued much that time,the literature on this topic was much more scattered in publishing forms than other topics and most of them were shown in the forms of letters,prefaces and isolated paper,monographs were rare.The selection principle and criticism perception were quite different for official and private anthology.Criticism ideology of Qianjia scholars were mainly focus on two aspects:writing creation and appreciation,emphasizing on learning and philosophical connotations,creating by exegesis were a popular fashion at that time."qing zhen ya zheng(????)" was taken as evaluation standard for articles by both the official and social critics.The most important contributions of this thesis were written from chapter 3 to chapter 5.Chapter 3 is about stylistics on Eight-part essay,In the 1st section the five different views on the origin of Eight-part essay were introduced and the cognition of contents and formats on Eight-part essay style was organized.In the 2nd section,three opinions on the Eight-part essay characteristics were introduced,they were strict edicts,high requirements on contents and format,proposition of thesis(contents and meaning of the paper decided by subject),all in all,speaking for the saints was the essence of Eight-part essay.The third section introduced the Qianjia scholars'comments on Eight-part essay,some scholars thought that it had the advantages.of various stylistics,so the function and the value of article studying were strong,so high valuation was given,but there was also negative valuations.In chapter 4 the four creation ideas adopted by Qianjia scholars were introduced.First,the composition should be based on knowledge.Second,the composition should be based on philosophical connotations.Third,the creation should learn from ancient prose.Fourth,Eight-part essay should be written by exegesis.In chapter 5,the main topic was the grammar of Eight-part essay,including the methods of reading and composition practicing,different writing types,specific practices.