Liu Zongyuan's Essays And Guoyu

Liu Zongyuan is famous writer and thinker in the Tang Dynasty. About Liu and his numerous works, there've been many researches so far,, but surprisingly, less researches mentioned one of his famous works Feiguoyu, and less noted the interaction between Liu's Feiguoyu and Guoyu, also a masterpiece of ancient literature. As a matter of fact, Feiguoyu plays a very important role in Liu's works. Out of deep appreciation of Guoyu, Liu wrote down the Feiguoyu, which had ideologically and artistically referred to Guoyu and developed it.Feiguoyu and Guoyu both advocate people-centered on ideology. Guoyu places an emphasis on the importance of the populace, juxtaposes the people with spirits, even people first and spirits second. Guoyu also requires the rulers cherish people, show sympathy for people, be obedient to people, not exact from people too much. Liu also thinks that whether the populace advocate the rulers or not is fundamental to a country's wax and wane, order and disorder. Liu also denied the existence of the spirits, boldly brought up the idea that people are much more valued than officials, and officials are servants of the people. He advocated that every one be equal before the law, every one be equal before the taxes, and suggested fostering people naturally and recuperatively. Besides, he urged to appoint the intelligent as officials but give up the ignorant. What's more, Liu also practiced these ideas in all his life. The world outlook of Guoyu appears to be an idealism of "interaction of nature and human", but Guoyu also shows the natural philosophical thinking about "Energy/Qi"and "Wu Xing". By criticizing the backward ideas of Guo Yu, Liu systematically expounded the materialistic world outlook of "nature not connected with human", and developed the thinking of "Energy/Qi" in Guoyu.Liu's essays expounding and proving with concrete examples and with tight logic. Besides the dialectils, there are also some interesting and wonderful debates in his essays. Liu's narrative prose is good at depicting characters and developing plot by brief and simple words, expressing his own opinion. Appropriate selection and suitable arrangement of materials, perfect structure, conscious of imagination and fiction in character and social depiction, all of there are echoes and improvements of the arts of Guoyu.