Botanic Expressions And Their Cultural Context In Pre-Qin Literature

Grass and trees are closely related to people's material and spiritual life.People plant fruits and vegetables for food,use specific kind of plants as medicine,sew mulberry and ramie for clothes,use pine and cypress to build temples and houses.Grass and trees not only benefit people's life for giving food,clothing,houses,health care,but also shade people's home and comfort people's spirit.As human life is inseparable from grass and trees,therefore,in the early literature,the writing of grass and trees is an important part of it.There are a lot of contents about grass and trees in the three books of the pre-Qin Dynasty,namely,the Book of Songs,the Classic of Mountains and Seas and Chu Ci.There are a lot of researches on the contents and functions of writing of grass and trees in these three texts,as well as the dialectics and exegesis of them.This dissertation attempts to compare the botanic writing in the three texts in the process of historical progress,and through this kind of comparative analysis,explore the cultural context and subjectivity that they rely on to make up for the research in this shortcoming field.In the Book of Songs,many poems are sung by the ancestors when they collect the grass and trees.It can be said that without the grass and trees,there is no beautiful lyrics of Guofeng.The solemn poems of Song and Ya describe the harvest of the grains in the fantanstic ceremony,and the praise of the grains differentiates from Guofeng.The Classic of Mountains and Seas records the names,forms and medicinal functions of more than 100 species of plants in detail,which embodies the valuable attitude of observation and the spirit of demonstration,in sharp contrast with the Book of Songs.Chuci has been symbolized by grass and trees for many times,with fragrant grass as the noble personality and evil grass as the fragrant grass's cunning.'The Beauty and the fragrant grass' has become a masterpiece.Although the three texts are concerned about plants,the ways of viewing and presenting them are quite different.The Book of Songs takes grass and trees as the startment of a poem,the Classic of Mountains and Seas as a case,and the Chuci takes a plant as a symbol.They show such distinct differences in the way of writing,observing and presenting.What kind of cultural context and subjectivity create these differences,which is the theme of this dissertation.This dissertation holds the idea that the Book of Songs,especially Guofeng,as a musical song,is inextricably linked with folk songs.The ancestors depend on grass and trees for their livelihood,and grass and trees are part of their living world.Therefore,Guofeng mainly relies on grass and trees for its prosperity,that is to say,to touch the scenery,to create feelings,and to lead out the tune of songs,not to take them as the aesthetic object or observation object,let alone the observation object,or taking grass and trees as the symbol of morality.Part of the poems in Daya and Song are used for harvest ceremony,which are written by the royal officers of classical music.They fully spread and wrote the harvest cereals and opened the chapter of 'Fu'.The way of presenting the observation of the cereals from a 'step back' point of view shows a completely different world view expression from that of Guofeng.No matter from the folksong Guofeng or the eulogy poem written by Yueguan,the grass and trees in the Book of Songs reflect the cultural context of the early farming life and the non objectified way of looking at the grass and trees.The description of plants and trees in the Classic of Mountains and Seas mainly appears in the book of mountains and rivers.Taking the geography of mountains and rivers as the outline,the book describes in detail all the plants,birds and animals in the mountains,and explains their names,forms,habits and medicinal purposes.It is a natural history record for the purpose of developing and utilizing the resources of mountains and rivers.This book was written by the royal officers,such as Situ,which reflects the practical purpose of the royal natural historic scholars.The grass and trees recorded in the Classic of Mountains are almost all medicinal herbs.Their writing style reflects the official focus and gaze on special things,which makes the grass and trees writing objectified for the first time.The writing of plants and trees in Chuci was written by literati.Plants and trees became the symbol of literati's self-expression.The creation tradition of 'Fragrant Plants and Beauties' has a long history.In Chuci,especially Lisao,the poet narrates his life experience and expresses his melancholy and indignant feelings.His self-expression is always combined with the symbol of noble and fragrant grass and trees,and even use symbolic expressions as wearing vanilla,eating flowers and drinking dew,living in a house built of flowers,etc.,to show that he is special.In the Chuci,plants are endowed with strong symbolic meaning,which has become a pure moral and aesthetic symbol,neither a part of material world,nor an object of observation and knowledge,but as a pure literary image,thus establishing the symbolic tradition of plants in Chinese literature.Due to the different subjectivity and cultural context,the three classics,the Book of Songs,the Classic of Mountains and Seas,and Chuci,show different characteristics in the way of viewing and presenting the plants,reflecting the different world views of different groups of the world and themselves.With the help of folklore study and combined with the works of royal Academy and literati writing,this dissertation attempts to make a systematic discussion on writting of the grass and trees and its generating mechanism of these three books.It is hoped that this study will be helpful to open up the academic vision of folklore and folkliterature,and explore classical literature with the help of folklore will provide a useful reference.