| Zeng Guofan, as one of the most celebrated figures of great renown and influence in the modern history of China, was a man of both civil and military ability who had abundant knowledge of both the past and the present. He established his military reputation over other officials, on one hand, during his hectic military career in the final domination of Qing Dynasty and on the other, his literature reputation when he spread Confucianism depending on his prestige and fame and published his famous articles. Zeng could be regarded as influential in the literary circles in Late Qing with his articles served as a link between the School of Tongcheng and Xiangxiang and his poems which hold the Song Poems in esteem with a large quantity of followers. Zeng Guofan exert profound influence on the modern literary circles by his theory and practice in literature.Zeng Guofan was standing at the forward position of politics and literature at that time and he combined the traditional literature on the basis of Confucianism as the body and Neo-Confucianism as the core. The formation of his literary theory was not only based on the solid traditional culture, but also his own adaptation of the traditional resource to the revolutionary trend of times, which enabled his theory of the characteristics of openness and practicability. This essay attempts to divide the literary thoughts into two periods according to his changing life experience and literary activities, the literary thoughts in Daoguang Period and the literary thoughts in Xianfeng Period. It analyzes the structure and connotation of his literary thoughts in the basis of the social and life background as well as both the chronological and synchronological comparison between the traditional literary thoughts and the literary trends in Late Qing. In this way, it intends to present the realistic significance of his literary thoughts by providing a clear track of the development and hence rebuild the figure of Zeng Guofan as an artist of literature.
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