The Textual Research Of The Tales Of Marvels In Wei-Jin And The Northern And Southern Dynasties

The supernatural story in the Northern and Southern Dynasties plays an important role in the history Of Chinese fiction and is an important component of the documents of that period of time. The supernatural story in the Northern and Southern Dynasties which originated from the group Confucian classics, the various schools of the Confucian classics and other history books of Han Dynasty is the further development of ancient mythology and has a close relationship with folk tales. What's more, the direct origin of legend story of Tang Dynasty, colloquial story of Song Dynasty, the myth and fatancy story of Ming and Qing Dynasties can undoubtedly be traced back to it. Therefore, its great influence and prominent position in the history of fiction as well as the history of Chinese literary is self-evident. However, because of the political interest tendency of Chinese ancient culture, the supernatural story is marginalized in the literary field which is dominated by Confucian political classics. Thus the supernatural story which was regard as absurd writing was not favoured by intellectuals at that time and was deserted by Chinese ancient culture. And it was printed in limited numbers and did not spread far. Moreover, it was seriously scattered, dilapdated and lost. And very few research work and sorting work were done on it. It was not until the contemporary time that Mr. Lu Xun paved the road for the research of supernatural stories in his work A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. Later , scholars like Liu Yeqiu, Guo Zhenyi, Fan Ning, Li Jianguo, Zhang Qingming, Wang Zhizhong, Hou Zhongyi, Cheng Yizhong, Wang Shaoying, Qi Zhingping etc. joined the effort and thus formed the research atmosphere of the supernatural story. Based on the research findings done by them, the present thesis attempts to make a preliminary exploration on the textual research and sorting about the author, writing time, collection, storage, passing down, versions of the supernatural story in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.There are many difficulties in textual research and sorting of the supernatural story in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, such as no fixed name for one book, contradictions in different versions of a book, difference in the the division of chapters, the fake name writer etc. Others like repetitive description of one event in a book, contradictive view points in the description one event. What's more, because of the long time negligence about it, mistakes, omission, false description, repetitive description are very serious in them. Besides, inadequate primitive material, divergence over the contmeporary research of it makes the sorting work extremely hard especially for some details. Therefore, the sorting job of them can not be achieved overnight. And those problems can not be solved by one person or in a book.It is a hard, long, systematic, step-by-step project.Therefore, the present author does not expect this thesis to be perfect. Through this thesis, the pesent author hopes that more attention be paid to the research of the supernatural story in the Northern and Southern Dynasties,...