A Study On The Literary And Artistic Thoughts Of Writings Of Prince Huainan By Liu An

Writings of Prince Huainan was a book written by Liu An, the Prince of Huainan, together with his mentor advisor. This book was guided by Taoism and it also adopted some thoughts from Confucianism, Moism, Legalists and Yin Yang school. In the course of dealing with philosophical, social and political thoughts, it had carried out and promoted the literary and artistic thoughts of pre-qin schools, forming its own rich ideas on literature and art, which had touched literary creation, literary and artistic function and appreciation. This book represented the effects of the thoughts of Yellow Emperor and Laozi upon literature and art in the early time of Western Han Dynasty. It has played a very important role in the history of Chinese literary and artistic thoughts. First of all, it had promoted the outlook on the form and spirit which was developed in pre-Qin time, bringing it from philosophy to literature and art and for the first time trying to deal with the problems of literary and artistic creation from the viewpoint of form and spirit. It put forward the theory of literary and artistic form and spirit that centered on the spirit along with the unity ofboth form and content, setting a very good start for this theory and for methodology. Next, it adopted the highlights of the literary and artistic thoughts of pre-qin schools and Confucianism on the form and content of literary works and also integrated various schools, insisting on the unity of form and content, which was a very important idea that " the high quality is the key of literature" and the famous theory that " good literature with strong emotion" which laid stress on the existence of individual true emotion and its powering function on literary creation. This idea was that the true nature of literary creation was the letting off of the subject's emotional activity. And this enriched the theory of artistic emotion. In dealing with the relation between literature and emotion, the earliest artistic imagist theory in China was thrown forward, too. And thirdly, it adhered to the principle to practice, affirming that literature and art must educate and make people touched and it expounded the variety and development of beauty, putting forward the idea that literature and art must be developed with the change of time which had great influence on the change and development of literature and art. Fourthly, Writings of Prince Huainan fully realized that literary and artistic appreciation had played very important roles in the creation of literature and art, pointing outthat literary and artistic appreciation was also a process of emotional activity and raising the main role of appreciation to a higher level in the activity. It also discussed the relation between the difference between the subject's feeling and that of sense of beauty, being sure that the receivers of the work had different aesthetic feelings were reasonable as well as pointing out that it was very important for the receivers to improve their ability to appreciate and to get rid of prejudice. Such a complete appreciation theory was the first to show off in Chinese literary criticism, very valuable. Of this book, many ideas are quite similar to the modern western receiving aesthetics.