The Study Of Han Dynasty Memorials

The Memorial mainly refers to the official documents played by ministers to the emperor,which belongs to the application-oriented upward official documents.In a narrow sense,the memorials mainly refer to written memorials.Broadly speaking,the memorials also include oral ones and written ones after being sorted out.This paper takes the memorial prose of the Han Dynasty as the research object,analyses the important system of the emergence of the memorial prose-the system of political discussion,probes into the generation,transmission,storage,category,format and political discourse of the memorials,and investigates the quotation of the "Five Classics" in the memorial prose,discusses the literary features of the memorials and the relationship between the memorials and several styles,expounds the including,preservation and classicization of the memorials in the Han,Wei and Six Dynasties.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the main body of this paper is divided into six chapters:Chapter one,the political system of the Han Dynasty and the formation mechanism of the memorial.The system of discussing political affairs is an important political system in the governance of ancient China,and it is also an important mechanism for the production of the memorials.This chapter is mainly based on the numerous political cases in the historical materials of the Han Dynasty.Firstly,it explains the meaning of "political discussion",lists the main forms of participation in political activities,and then summarizes three types of political discussion by analyzing the coverage of the political discussion system,namely memorializing,summoning and assembling,and elaborates them systematically.Through the investigation of the five elements of the political activities,we find the connections and differences among the three types of political discussion.Then,it summarizes the three types of procedures,and finds that they have some intersections.If the issue is of great importance,it may require multiple rounds of political process,and its procedures will become extremely complicated,causing some variants in the three types of political procedures.Finally,on the basis of the three kinds of political procedure and variant procedure,we sum up the systematic procedure of political activity in Han Dynasty.Chapter two,the memorials in Han Dynasty and political discourses.This chapter is mainly based on the rhetoric of the Han Dynasty.It inspects the composing of the rhetoric from the author,the form and the production of the rhetoric.It examines the operation of the memorials from the aspects of the way it is played up,the procedure of transmission,the procedure of processing and the procedure of issuing.It examines the storage of the memorials from its storage location.There are four types of memorials in the Han Dynasty:chapter,recital,table and argumentation.By analyzing the contents,the similarities and differences of their functions are examined.According to the comprehensive contents of the memorials,the scope of political discussion is summed up and divided into ten categories.Then,it also investigates the writing materials and the arrangement of characters of the memorials through the existing documents,unearthed cultural relics,and left-over stele inscriptions,and makes a detailed analysis and summary of the format and the text structure of the memorials.At last,through the text of the memorials,four kinds of political discourses are summarized,and their functions in the memorials are examined in detail.Chapter three,the investigation and analysis of the "Five Classics" cited in the memorials of Han Dynasty.The Confucian classics of the Han Dynasty are very developed,and the quotation of the "Five Classics" in Han Fu,prose,imperial edicts and memorials is also very common.Based on the content of the memorial,this chapter systematically counts the citations of the Book of Songs,Shangshu,Yili,Zhouyi,Chunqiu and "three biographies" in the memorials of the Han Dynasty,and summarizes the characteristics of the citations of the Classics from different periods and different authors.According to the situation of quoting "Jing" in the memorials,the close relationship between "Jing" and politics is discussed.Then,we will compare the contents of the "Five Classics" quoted in the preamble with those of the current"Five Classics" one by one,and examine the reasons for the emergence of "different texts".Finally,according to the specific situation of quoting "Five Classics" in the memorials,we summarize three ways of quoting "Five Classics" in the memorials.In addition,it also explains in detail the purpose of quoting the "Five Classics" in the memorials.Chapter four,the literary features of the memorials in the Han Dynasty.The memorials of the Han Dynasty are attached to the real politics,and the stylistic attributes of the "political affairs" official documents have not been fundamentally changed.However,a large number of memorials still show distinctive literary characteristics.This chapter mainly discusses rhetoric,language style and stylistic style.The memorials generally use various rhetorical devices,which makes the memorials more appealing and persuasive at the same time of reasoning.Generally speaking,the language of memorials present a "elegant" style,and the main reasons for this result are "taking meaning" and "taking words" in the process of introducing"classics".Due to the differences between modern and ancient classics in the aspects of Scripture and interpretation of Scripture,as well as their different development in the two Han Dynasties,the "elegance" of the memorials in the Western Han Dynasty is complicated,restrained and simple,while the "elegance" of the memorials in the Eastern Han Dynasty is concise,transparent and gorgeous.In addition,the change of political situation will affect the mentality of literati,which is reflected in their memorials,thus forming different styles of writing.There are similarities in political function and language style between the memorials and Song in Han Dynasty.Chapter five,the relationship between the memorials and several styles in Han Dynasty.The authors of the memorials not only write the memorial,but also are good at many styles.Therefore,the formation of the characteristics of memorial literature is not isolated,but also related to the mutual penetration of literary styles.This chapter compares the memorials of the Han Dynasty with political essays,Han Fu and Han Song,and finds many commonalities between them.The memorials of Han Dynasty and political essays show similar characteristics style and language style in discussing problems.The memorials of Han Dynasty are similar to that in Han Fu in the function of satire and remonstrance and the extensiveness of the concerned problems.Many similarities between the memorials and political essays,Han Fu and Han song play an important role in promoting the formation of memorial literature characteristics.Chapter six,the collection and circulation of the memorials in the Han Dynasty before the Tang Dynasty.After the emperor had processed the memorial document,the original document was stored by the government to form archives.The number of memorials in the Han Dynasty was huge,and they could be spread to the present day.It could not be separated from the continuing collation and dissemination of the memorials by the people with lofty ideals in the Han,Wei and Six Dynasties.This process was also an important part of the classicization process of the memorials.This chapter respectively from the Han Dynasty,the Wei Jin period,the southern and Northern Dynasties,in the form of a list to show the preservation of the memorials of Han Dynasty in the classics,history,sub documents,collection documents,and summarizes the characteristics of each period.At last,it discusses the issue of the memorial’s classicalization before Tang Dynasty,which is closely related to the appreciation and exclusion of politicians,the selection and inheritance of historians,the collection and quotation of writers,the selection and elimination of literary selectors,and the summary and comment of literary critics.