Study On Biographies Of Women In Ancient China

Liu Xiang's Biographies of Women in Ancient China has the important value of history and literature. In Chinese ancient time, many writers played attention to the research of the book's writer and its version problems. At the same time, a lot of literati explained, glossed and prefaced it. In new times, academe had gotten plentiful and substantial productions of the study of Biographies of Women in Ancient China. And the productions were focused on the compilation, edition, idealistic value, historical meaning, literary achievement, and so on.This thesis attempts to the works from the perspective of literary criticism.The exordium surveys the studies of Biographies of Women in Ancient China.Chapter one examines the historical background from the aspects of the spreading of Confucianism, the sense of failing of Liuxiang in his official career, the debauchery of Emperor Cheng, as well the literature functioning as the means to criticize and nurture, all of which contribute to the completion of the book, and makes a judgment that the literary genre of Biographies of Women in Ancient China is a rudimentary form of the Chinese historical novel from the perspective of the development and evolvement of the novel's definition.Chapter two lays emphasis on the analysis of feminine images and divided them into judicious women, chaste women, and lubricious women, such as Meng Ke's mother, two wives of Emperor Shun, wife of Qi Liang, Huai Ying, and Dongguo Jiang, and contrast the characters with ones in Zuo Zhuan, Meng Zi and Shi Ji and so on, through which Liu Xiang means to spread the social ethics of confucianist and educate the emperor. He portrays these feminine images vividly through using some descriptive skills to depict the appearance, mental activity, and individual speech.In the third chapter, we discussed the language art of Biographies of Women in Ancient China and found it was affluent in the syntax. Also, it handled comparison, metaphor and parallel correctly. Its language was perspicuous, fluent and art-affection. The author toned up the book's expressive force with poesies, folksongs and proverbs in it.In the tag, we stated Biographies of Women in Ancient China had an important influence on Chinese olden novels at content and form. All in all, Biographies of Women in Ancient China afforded the rich literary creative themes for aftertime's literature.