A Study Of The Letters Of The Members Of The Xie Family Of Prefecture Chenjun In The East Jin Dynasty And The South Dynasties

In the East Jin Dynasty (317-420) and the South Dynasties (420-589), a big clan—the Xie family of Prefecture Chenjun was a noble family known both in political and in literary arenas. Among the many types of prose, the epistolary prose is the one that can best reflect an author's true feelings. Letters of the members of the Xie family at that time were seldom kept, but those who had reputations in political and literary arenas, their letters were bequeathed to posterity. From the 20^th century on, the Xie family had been concerned more and more, while the specialized researches on their letters were rare. This thesis tries to investigate systematically the letters of the Xie family, excavates the historical and the literary values contained in these letters from the documentary and the literary angles. The author expects the study can fill in the gaps in the researches of the Xie family in the East Jin Dynasty and the South Dynasties.This thesis consists of three parts— foreword, text and conclusion:The foreword part gives a definition to the epistolary prose investigated, taking the private letters as the center of investigation; in the meantime, the letters written by the members of the Xie family in the East Jin Dynasty and the South Dynasties are countered in list. Afterward, the intention of writing this thesis is explained clearly.The first volume of the text part sets out to investigate from the documental angle the letters and their writers in the five dynasties of the South Dynasties, i.e. the Song Dynasty (420-479), the Qi Dynasty (479-502), the Liang Dynasty (502-557) and the Chen Dynasty (557-589). The first chapter of this part emphases to investigate 12 letters of 4 writers in the East Jin Dynasty. The second chapter emphases to investigate 17 letters of 8 writers in the South Dynasties. Both chapters include the textual researching of the writing time of...