SuXun's Theory Of Prose And His Creation Of Prose

SuXun's prose is snubbed by most of the scholars in their busy studies of the prose in Song Dynasty, but it doesn't mean that SuXun's prose is worthless. In fact, SuXun played a very important pole not only in the education to his sons, but also on the literary world in Song Dynasty. SuXun devoted himself to saving the nation and helping the needy all through his life, and there is no meaningless word in his prose. The study of SuXun's theory of prose and his prose's style is still valuable today.The thesis will be divided into three parts: SuXun's theory of prose, the concrete creation of his prose and the historic source. SuXun created his own 'tradition of prose' very bravely when the 'tradition of Tao' occupied a dominant position in the literary world at that time, advancing a new theory that 'prose is similar to Tao', really combining prose and Tao into one. So the first part of this thesis will systemically discussing SuXun's theory of prose, try to clarify his prose's source and his influence to the later ages. SuXun's prose is full of power and grandeur, his emotion is mild, his prose is well organized and his language is concise and vivid, so the second part of the thesis will concretely discuss the creation of his prose from these three aspects. Lastly, try to trace to the source of SuXun's prose from two aspects: Confucianism and Taoism, centering on the influence of 'MengZi' and 'XunZi' to SuXun from Confucianism, the influence of paying attention to the nature and expressing the true feeling from Taoism. Then discuss the deep influence of The History of ZhanGuo to SuXun in the structure and the association of the language in his prose.