Reseach On The Family Biography Of Wei, Jin, Southern And Northern Dynasties

Family biography is the outstanding fact record of important family members. As a literary style, it officially appears in the late Han Dynasty. The period of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties is its prosperous time. Among 29 family biographies written by the Bibliographical Treatise of History of Sui, most were created during the period. It is a spectacular phenomenon indeed. This paper is intended to study the phenomenon. Besides preface and appendix, main text includes four parts.The first part is the survey of family biography. Above all, the author clarifies about its definition, and analyzes the differences between family biography, miscellaneous biography and genealogy during the period of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties; Then, the author elaborates its origination as a literary style, its development, its prosperity and its spreading and transformation during the following period in the context of history.In the second part, the author makes the concrete analysis on family biography during the period of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. First of all, demonstrates the existing and the lost family biographies ,furthermore, the situation of their authors; then according to the content, classifies the lost articles of family biography into the profile of life and history, the narration of the political achievement, the extolling of virtues and aptitude, and the description of charms, appearance and behavior, etc; Finally, analyzes the prosperity of family biography is the result that the psychology, the literature, the society affect each other during the period of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.The third part carries on the analysis of the literature characteristics and the ideological tendency during the period of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The literature characteristics mainly reflect in four aspects. Firstly, they carved out a number of clear-cut and vivid images; secondly, some lost articles have also the certain plots; thirdly, usually use ballads and proverbs to beautify characters; fourthly, the words are concise and briefness. And during the period, its ideological tendency mainly has two aspects: one is the Confucianist, and the other is the metapsychical climate.The fourth part elaborates the status and the functions of family biography during the period of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. At this time, in respect of history, family biography becomes the important reference to compile and the proofread history books; In respect of literature, as one kind of miscellaneous biographies, it is of great significance in the course of transition from "history" to "literature". Objects, which it pays close attention to, have varied from "a group of people" to "a kind of people"; The selection of events from narration of the significant events to attention to daily trivia; also, the writing skill from real records to utilization of the legendary technism, so its literariness strengthens unceasingly.Later, in the spreading course, many family biographies have already lost or been missing. The appendix of this paper is to record the existing family biographies during the period of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties so that the readers would have a complete impression to its survey during the period.