A Study On The Formation Of Supernatural Stories' Collection In The Wei Jin Southern And Northern Dynasties

In the Period of Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties,a lot of people including scholars and religious believers began to compile collections of supernatural stories,which led to the collection and independence of this type of stories.The goal of our research is to deal with the formation of the supernatural story collections born in Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties.On one hand,we are to study the following aspects:forming background,the development of novel's self-consciousness,the collection's compilers,the naming and structural characteristics.On the other hand,we are also to study the source of these stories in the supernatural story collections and the authors of the stories.For researching convenience,the paper is divided into two parts.Part one is a comprehensive study on the supernatural story collection's formation.Chapter one is about the research on the forming background of the supernatural story collections.For one thing,in the Period of Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties,the novel's self-consciousness was increasing and concentration consciousness about supernatural stories was coming into being,which let people realize the differences between historical events and supernatural stories.For another thing,with the Confucianism's declining and metaphysics' starting,people began to realize the aesthetic features of supernatural stories.Also,the scholars' habit of gathering and talking,the scholars' interests in spreading supernatural stories and the collections' spreading,are the main impetus for the formation of supernatural story collection.Chapter two is the study on supernatural story collection's compilers and the authors of these stories.The identity of the compilers can be classified into scholars,Taoists and Buddhists,who have different purposes and inherit the special identity from School of Xiaoshuo ???.The scholar compilers have favorable conditions for compiling the collections,such as their birth from the society's bottom level,the opportunity to read the royal classics and the experience of writing geography works.The story author's identity is diverse,including alchemists,Taoists,Buddhists,folk entertainers,court entertainers and scholars.And among them the Taoists and Buddhists want to prove the true existence of ghost and the scholar pursues the novels' aesthetic entertainment.There are three types of relationship between the compiler and the story's author:firstly,the compiler is just an editor if he doesn't take part in the story's creation,such as rearranging or polishing the raw story;secondly,the compiler is a co-author if he takes part in the story' s creation;thirdly,the compiler is the author on condition that the compiler totally creates the story and sets the story into the collection.Chapter three is the study on the source of the works in the supernatural story collections.By analyzing the supernatural story collections'prefaces and postscripts,and researching the stories in the collection,we can find six types of sources.The first is written materials,such as history books,Taoist books,the collections of supernatural stories,and geography books etc.The second is oral legends,that is,the compiler sometime tells us the story's legendary nature marked with the word "say",sometime tells us the stories' narrators,and some stories without "say" or narrators have legendary nature apparently.The third is the adapted stories,which are featured by reserved original story's main pilots but simplified or polished details.The forth is the innovative stories by inheriting other stories' structures.The fifth is the innovative stories by fusing various stories' structures.The sixth is completely original story.The first three categories are old stories,and the last three types are new stories,whose original authors are scholars.So we can know that many scholars began to write new supernatural stories and we can't confirm who the author is but we know that the compiler is the co-author because he is the last writer of the stories.Chapter four,the study on naming and characteristics of structures of supernatural story collections.There are mainly four naming characteristics.The first is named with ZHuan ?,Ji ? and ZHi,?,showing their historical characteristics.The second is named with Guai ?,QiXie ??,Yi ?,SHen?,YouMing ?? and Xian?,showing the legendary characteristics.the third is named with Lie ?,Sou ?,Lu ?,Ji ?,SHiYi??,Yuan ? and Lin ?:showing the convergence characteristics.The forth is named with Ying ?,Yan ?,and Xiang ?,showing the religious characteristics.The stories in the collections of supernatural stories mainly are written with note-style and with four-record patterns,including Soushen ?? pattern,Bowu ?? pattem,Shiyi ??pattern and Fujiao ?? pattern,which is decided by compiler' s expression needs.Part two,a case study on the formation of supernatural story collections.Chapter I,The study on LieYiZHuan' s formation.Firstly,the history books written from Sui to the glorious age of Tang Dynasty believe LieYiZHuan' s compiler is CaoPi,but Book of Tang believes the compiler is ZHangHua.We can speculate it through the stories which happened after CaoPi' s death that Lie YiZHuan was complied by CaoPi but it was continued by an anonymous man who lived in Jin dynasty.From the angle of content analysis,the book had been written before CaoPi became the crown prince of kingdom wei ??.There are many stories about Yinsi ?? in the book,but CaoPi banned any Yinsi ?? after becoming the king of wei.CaoPi is believed to write the book for mainly two purposes.One is to seek entertainment,another to seek the long-lasting fame among the world by writing.The works' resources in LieYiZHuan includes written materials,oral legends,adapted stories,the innovative stories by inheriting the other stories' structures and completely original stories.As the first supernatural story collection,this book has a big impact on other collections in the following aspects:naming pattern,selection scope of stories,and the treatment of original works.Chapter two,the relationship between GanBao' thoughts about novel and the formation of SouSHenJi.Mainly GanBao's ideas can be divided into three types.Proving the true existence of the ghost is what GanBao mentions.But this is GanBao's description to the stories in SouSHenJi not GanBao' s opinion,even not GanBao ' purpose to compile SouSHenJi.At the same time,GanBao's thought of Yin Yang ?? affects the formation of SouSHenJi.The second idea is entertainment,which lets GanBao select many works irrelevant to ghost and many works prove ghosts' inexistence.GanBao also declared he kept recording the truth,but the declaration is just his excuse and cover of collecting different versions of hearsay and of creating of stories.Chapter three,the study on YouMingLu's literary feature.The stories in YouMingLu appear with distinct features.Most of the stories focus on expressing human nature,such as love and family affection,and the story language has strong tendency of poem.The formation of literary feature is relevent to the choice of these stories.On one hand,the complier chose works from other supernatural story collections.On another hand,the complier chose more literary stories when a story had two or three versions.At last,the complier was not bounded by religion but chose the most interesting stories from Confucianism,Taoism and Buddhism.