The Research Of YangXiong's FaYan

Yang Xiong said in his Preface for Fa Yan that his Fa Yan was writing for the imitation of the Analects, which aimed at carrying on the saint's thoughts and criticize exponents of various schools of thoughts. From the beginning of Hanshu·YiWenZhi, each dynasty's researchers all classified FaYan into Confusianism. So the Confucianism is the main thoughts of FaYan. However, because of the social background, the thoughts trend of FaYan and the personal influence of YangXiong, FaYan is not merely a Confucian work. The Taoism is taking its important position in FaYan. It is lopsided to summarize the main character of FaYan's thought by Confusianism or Taoism. This paper thinks that the main character of FaYan's thought is treating Confusianism as base and Taoism as subsidiary. FaYan involves contents of several aspects, such as politics, philosophy and literature etc., and has its original opinion. It has deep influence in the history of thought and literature. This paper tries to probe into and explore FaYan from two angles of the history of thought and the history of literature basing on the breakthrough point of treating Confusianism as base and Taoism as subsidiary. In addition, FaYan's personal peculiar artistic character and its influence on the later literary thought also are the major contents this paper studies on.This paper is divided into four chapters:Chapter one is the research of the thought of Fa Yan. This chapter focus on discussing the thought's peculiarity of treating Confusianism as base and Taoism as subsidiary in FaYan, which can be divided into five parts as follows: 1) the evolved thought under the influence of the models of saints and the Confucian Classics; 2) the thought of famousness and infamousness in politics; 3) the contradictory thought of obeying the destiny and the interaction between God and man in the relation of God and man; 4) the thought of mainly guided by the thought of taking part in social activities in Confusianism, and adopting the thought of living in seclusion in Taoism;5) the forming reason of the thought of treating Confusianism as base while Taoism as subsidiary. Chapter two is the research of the literary thought of FaYan. Under the influence of thought of treating Confusianism as base and Taoism as subsidiary, the literary thought of FaYan also shows the character of treating Confusianism as base and Taoism as subsidiary, which mainly manifests in the following aspects: First, the literary view of attaching importance to the magnificence of the article and the political function of the article. On the one hand, YangXiong inherited the traditional aesthetic view of Confusianism and emphasized on the function of literary instruction from the angle of the thought of guided by the models of saints and the Confucian Classics; on the other hand, he forms the literary view of emphasizing on the nature of things under the influence of Taoism, showed emphasis on the function of appreciating the beauty of literature. Due to the contradiction of these two sides, YangXiong proposed the neutralized aesthetic standard to make the two sides in harmony and in unity. Second, under the condition of the unity of contents and the form, Fa Yan puts emphasis on the trend of appreciating the beauty. In the position of satisfying the neutralization and the unity of contents and form., YangXiong took emphasis on the beauty of the form, which manifested the time character and the trend of literature development. Third, the discussion about the narration and the writing. Beginning from the thought of inheriting and evolving the previous thoughts, Yang Xiong endowed a new essence to the relationship of narration and wrting--------write the book with displaying the previous people's thoughts. Forth, the contradictory literary view of what being written is what one is thinking and what being written can not express what one is thinking. Chapter three is the artistic character of Fa Yan. Different from previous conversation-based prose, Fa Yan shows its peculiar artistic style.