A Study Of Liu Xiang And His Literary Achievements

Liu Xiang, living at the end of Han Dynasty, has made great achievements in the history of Literature Studies with the revising work of Wu Jing Mi Shu directed by him and outcome of famous book Bei Lun compiled by him. Apart from his achievements in literature studies, Liu Xiang has a great command in Jing Studies, advocates Confucianism, and created some literary works of his own as well. This makes the latter studies and research on him quite wide as he has gained great achievements in literature studies as well as the development of Chinese literature. But generally speaking, the former studies on Liu Xiang mainly focused on his contribution in literature studies, his thoughts of politics and Yi Studies, and his life and extraction, while his outstanding achievements in literary creation are ignored. Hence, the thesis mainly aims to discuss his literary achievements and his thoughts on literary creation. In this way, the thesis falls into following five parts.Part one is the review on the previous studies made on Liu Xiang, which is a survey of such relevant studies from Dong Han Dynasty to today. This reveals the deficiency of the previous relevant studies and promotes the importance of the studies of the thesis on his literary achievements and thoughts of literary creation.Part two is a brief account of Liu Xiang's extraction and his life story, which discusses the influence of his distinctive identity of Han royal family to his thoughts, his political life and literary creation in different periods of his life, the close relationship between his literary creation and political life, and the problems of the time of his birth and death.Part three is survey on Liu's principles of choosing friends. Based on Han History, this part introduces some representative friends of Liu's in both in his youth and old age, such as Xiao Wangzhi, Zhoukan, Renhong, Yinxian, etc, for his principles of choosing friends and life stories of some of his friends imply the style of his life and literary creations.Part four is the analysis on Liu's literary works, which emphasizes on thespreading and conservation of his literary works that can be divided into three types: self-created works, compiled ones, and works supposed to be his.Part five is the study of Liu's literary achievements and literary thoughts. Based on the past reseaches on Liu Xiang, this part respectively illustrates the imitation to Li Sao in Jiu Tan, the attach to his society in Zou Yi, and the content and compiling characteristics of Xin Xu, Shuo Yuan, The Stories of Lienu. Besides, this part further discusses Liu's literary thoughts according to the revelation of his literary works, which can be summarized as: firstly, variety interpretation and the beauty of moderate; secondly, literary works are different from Jing Studies; thirdly, literary works have lyric characteristics; fourthly, literary works have the function of "unobjectionable criticism"; fifthly, Liu's literary thought gives birth to the thoughts of women literature.