Concerning The Biographies Of Writers

There are a great many ancient literature works in China, but biographies concerning writers are very few and came up too late. On the Jin, the first biography on writers-The Biographies of Writers appeared in the literary world. This book recorded stories of the writers from Warring State to Sung on extensive scale with great volumes and had a profound influence during later period, directly bringing a era of biographies such as The Biographies of Tang's Gifted Scholars etc. There are a lot of worthy data in the book for us to study the literature in Han and Wei, Jin. However, it had been always neglected since it was lost in Sung. There are only two specialized works concerning the book, which are The Collection of Zhang Zhi 's The Biographies of Writers written by Zhou Xunchu and The Research of the First Biography of Writers-The Biographies of Writers written by Zhu Yingping. I have investigated the remained section tring to outline the opening book and emphasizing its value on the base of Zhou's work.Part one. I have researched on the origin and development of the class of writers in Han and Wei, Jin. First, I put in order the related data about the word writer which can be collected and checked those meanings, discovering the gradual evolution of word writer from sophist to literature officer and literature attendant during Han and Wei, Jin. Then, I also discussed the origin and development of the class of writers, and drew a conclusion that writers who acted as a social role came to the society in Han Dai, and increased rapidly in quantity and rose greatly in status.Part two. Zhang Zhi's definition of writers. Firstly, Zhang Zhi had mentioned and quoted a great number of representative works of many writers in his book, and these works primarily include the poem, practical article and the scholar's work. In the term of accomplishment, writers in the eyes of Zhang Zhi were the people who had works.Among them, he had emphasized and praised the writers who could create excellent pure literature works. Secondly, most of these writers hold official positions and they were quite centered as officer or attendant in imperial palace and crown prince's palace, and assistant belonged to high officials. These positions reflected that the writers had a higher social status during Wei and Jin than in Han. However, they still were the attendants in essence. The writers in Zhang Zhi's book were a class of literature attendants who pleased their masters by their literature works, and they differed from the writers today who have independent social status.Part three. Value analysis of The Biographies of Writers. First, in term of history of literature, The Biographies of Writers is remarkable historiography in Han and Wei, Jin which was the representative work evolving from historical works to literature works. And this book had recorded the writers in Wu, where were a greater number of writers than we thought to be. These data give us a refreshing insight into local literary circles of that ages, thus we could have a whole understanding on the literature world at that time. Second, the value of history of literary criticism. The Biographies of Writers was earlier data using the method that people select some sentences from an article, then comment on those in the term of literary criticism, which led the future of poem criticism. Third, the value of historical data. This book had recorded a lot of precious historical data which we can't find out in other books and met the need for us to research into those famous writers.