The Tales Of Marvels In The Song Dynasty And Confucianism?Buddhism And Taoism

The tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty,a kind of classical short Chinese stories appeared after the mature legendary fictions of the Tang Dynasty got prosperous,not only continues and develops the tales of marvels from the Tang Dynasty,but also marks the transformation of classical short Chinese stories and are followed as well by the creation of the classical short Chinese stories of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.The tales of marvels during the Song Dynasty are also a member of the great literature family in that time.However,they,whose connotation still needs a further study,are usually ignored because of the excellent legendary fictions of the Tang Dynasty and the abundant literature in the Song Dynasty.With the development of social culture and some changes,the talcs of marvels of the Song Dynasty,which began at the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty and lasted by the end of the Southern Song Dynasty,have the features of not merely the great quantity of them but also the trend of being popular and colloquial as a whole.The development of the tales of marvels of the Song Dynasty had passed through three stages.The early Northern Song Dynasty is a period of recovery and development of the stories creation.Later,the creation of the legendary tales of the Song Dynasty,from the middle and later periods of Northern Song Dynasty to the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty,came into a biggish development,and it began to form its own characteristics.In the late of the Southern Song Dynasty,the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty declined.The creation of the legendary tales of the Song Dynasty,compared with the legendary fictions in the Tang Dynasty,has such four remarkable characteristics as the following:first,the writers considered learning and knowledge as legendary stories;second,the writers liked expressing their opinions in the stories;third,the stories were gradually popularized;fourth,the writers gradually tended to depict weirdly in their works.During the later period of Southern Song Dynasty,the creation of legendary stories declined due to the unlucky fate of the country.The creation of the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty has its own characteristics because of its great relationship with the new social and cultural environment of the periods in the two Song dynasties.The social culture of Song Dynasty,especially the culture of Confucianism,Buddhism,and Taoism etc,deeply influenced the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty.Those works are worth our study and exploration because of their abundant social and cultural information.We can say that the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty are a good window to observe the ideology and culture of the Song Dynasty.The deficiency of their artistry actually requires our study from the angle of ideology and culture.From this window,we can firstly get a glimpse of the relationship between the legendary fictions of the Song Dynasty and Confucianism.In the two Song dynasties,Confucianism recovered its leading role;Neo-Confucianism also sprang up and a lot of historic subject matters and social ethics subject matters were seen in legendary-fiction creation.Confucianism has always been being concerned about the reality,history,and ethics,and this kind of subject matters has a strong historic consciousness and social ethics concern.Writers in that time often used narrative or characters to express themes relating to Confucianism;for example,compliance with ethics,feeling deeply grateful,filial duty,being loyal and steadfast,integrity,keeping promise,being diligent in politics and loving people,caring for national affairs etc.The writers,for their writing habits,tended to abandon narration and characters for directly expressing thoughts.They,in creative and artistic methods,were also affected by the traditional Confucian literary thought;they adopted the narrative realism writing,lacking necessary fiction.Being influenced by historical literature,they used the narrative prose summary short of necessary details.They not only wrote a series of virtuous women and righteous,loyal,and filial images who had Confucian styles,but also created some negative and cheater images.This reflects their self-cultivation and honesty in life philosophy which is also an important content of Confucianism.In this kind of work,the writers tended to highlight the images of books,musical instruments,swords,etc.which were the expr ession for the images and theme.In the Song Dynasty,Confucianism was the foundation of the country,but in the light of the actual situation of the society,Buddhism and Taoism,the two thoughts originating from the Tang Dynasty,were not dormant,and on the contrary,they became aggravated,pr ofoundly affecting every aspect of social life.This trend has been fully reflected in the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty.The tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty in which monks,nuns,priests,gods,and ghosts are used as writing objects are mostly fiction stories,imaginations,and fiction ingredients;this shows that the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty have supernatural creation tendency,and they give readers a fantastic sense in their reading experience.The formation of such a kind of stories comes from the appearance of Buddhism and Taoism for the construction and promotion of the magical world.Buddhism sets great store by heaven and hell;Taoism has constructed the fairy ghost world,and they both are not real existence.But in the discourse system of Buddhi sm and Taoism,the unreal istic existence is different:the so-called heaven and hell,for Buddhism,are antagonistic to the real world;they can not communicate with each other.But the ghost-and-fairy world built by Taoism is not merely opposite to the real world but also compatible to it.Ghosts can get along with ordinary people under certain conditions.Therefore,we can read a lot of love stories in which people,God,fairy or ghost can get along with friendly.There arc many differences in the expression of the themes of Buddhism and Taoism.The Buddhism legendary fictions often deliberately advocate karma as well as good and evil thoughts of persuasion(with many direct declaration without masks),but Taoism often preaches to people the pursuit of freedom and the idea of happiness through stories,representation of scenes,images,etc.Buddhism,corresponding to the novel image,highlights lotuses to show Buddha's holy purity,and gives prominence to dreamland for describing the strange and peculiarly unreal world,but Taoism always writes the mountain scenes,immortal caves,medicine,and wine,fully embodying the characteristics of Taoism.The characters of Buddhism and Taoism in the tales of marvels in the Song Dynasty reflect different spirits;generally speaking,writers'artistic sketches of Taoists' image are better than those of Buddhists',and they can arouse peoples' reading interests,impressing the readers deeply.In a word,the legendary fictions of Song Dynasty is not only a literary creation(worth no praising),but a hotbed of "culture",and they have a lot to do with Confucianism culture--the mainstream thought in the society of Song Dynasty.They worth our reading and interpretation from cultural perspective.