A Study Of Chen Jiru's Essay

Chen Jiru is not only a famous writer of essay, but also an important member of the Xing Ling literature school in the Later Ming Dynasty. But studing Chen Jiru has not been paid enough attention to because of different reasons. This thesis's writer had carefully read all works of Chen not only accepted by large series of books such as Si Ku Cun Mu Cong Shu, Cong Shu Ji Cheng Xin Bian and Xu Xiu Si Ku Quan Shu but also all sorts of offprints in order to grasp the pulse of Later Ming Dynasty, experience the psychology of that time and thoroughly expose Chen's ideology and essays.First part of this thesis reviews the history about studing Chen in order thant this project can be smoothly carried out and obtain valuable result. Second part expounds Chen's life, ideology and works edition. Ideology depends on life, and write is decided by one's ideology. Chen Jiru's whole life can be divided into two periods in the light of the limit of the year of 1586. In the former period, Chen Jiru actively took part in all sorts of things of society, in later period of his life, he live in seclusion as a hermit. Following main Confucian idea in chen's head, there are some evident elements of Buddhism and Taoist school. Third part expounds Chen Jiru's literature theory. He was against the formalism but proved learning antiquity; advocated the doctrine of shen, Qi and Yun; pursued essay substantial; also held that essay should be neat and tidy. Fourth part discusses Chen Ji-ru's all kinds of essays. Xiao Chuang You Ji is the representative of Chen's degant-philosophic essays, it reaches a huge height in both thought and artistic realm. Kuang Fu Zhi Yan, the representative of his argumentative essays, pursued the practice and satirized the politics and military affairs extensively. Shu Jiao, the representative of his note essays, embodied leisure and elegant personality of the writer. The contents of preface-postscript essays are very wide, either discussing the artistic life with his friends, or expressing his own attitude to life and aesthetic interest, or reflecting the change of age thoughts, or innovating the orthodox ideas of Confucian. Chen's novelistic essays included Jian Wen Lu, Hu Hui, and Xiang An Du, either recording the interesting anecdotes of Ming Dynasty, or adapting fore-records. Chen's biographic essays showed his idea of personality liberation. Last part discusses Chen's influences on later generations and his position on literature history.