Marriages To Awaken Common People And The Folk Customs In Shandong

As a novel bearing thick realistic color,Marriages to Awaken Common People has a high value in forklore.Although the academy in 1980s saw great progress and expansion of study on this book,it is still short of research with forklore perspective. This book tells of stories about the marriage of two generations between Wucheng country and Zhangqiu country in dialect of Shandong.Within the framework of these two stories,this book shows abundantly and entirely the scene of life in Shandong,and rolls out an all-embracing painting.I consider that it is pretty meaningful and necessary to trim and study the forklore phenomena in this book.On one hand,it can make up the deficiency of study with sociology and forklore perspective,and on the other hand,it is helpful to explore the traditional culture of Shandong.This paper focuses on the forklore phenomena of Marriages to Awaken Common People,takes Shandong as the geographical scope,and takes advantage of the classification approach in forklore to trim the forklore of Shandong in Marriages to Awaken Common People,and discuss the literary influence of forklore depiction on novel on the basis of showing forklore scene of Shandong during that era.This paper divides the phenomena in Marriages to Awaken Common People into ceremonies of life, customs of folk belief and customs of festival,details the idiographic appearance of Shandong forklores in Marriages to Awaken Common People and tries to sort out the function of these forklores in the novel.The ceremonies of life can be divided into etiquette of marriage,convention of birth,etiquette of birthday and convention of funeral.There are detailed portrait and depiction.As the hometown of Confucius and Mencius,Shandong bears deep effect of Confucian thought,holds strong views of patriarchal clan system and loyalty and filial piety.Through the depiction in Marriages to Awaken Common People,we can see that the succession and preservation of 'Liu Li'(Six Manners) in the marriage within Shandong.Due to views of patriarchal clan system and filial piety,Confucian tradition places significance on funeral,and it especially highlights in Shandong,so there is a great number of complicated rites in funeral.Though the detailed descriptions of Chao Liang's birth in the book,we can figure out emphasis on the view of patriarchal clan in Shandong during Ming and Qing era.The depiction of Madame Chao's birthday also manifests the strong view of loyalty and filial piety.The customs of folk belief can be divided into customs of the Taoist-Immortal's belief,customs of the Fox- Spirits belief,customs of belief in soul and customs of belief in artificial deities.This novel details activities which takes the Jade emperor(one deity in Taoism),wind,rain,thunder,lightening and belief in Three-Official-Emperor as spiritual meaning,such as temple fair of Jade Emperor Peak,festival of Zhongyuan(15 July),Lei gong(deity who commands thunder),etc,and these activities take on obvious geographic features of Shandong;because of the belief in Dongyue emperor(one deity dwells on Mountain Tai),belief in soul and ghost prevails in Shandong.Apart from depicting present deities,the novel even creates a deity,Holy Mother of Mountain Yi, Madame Chao.This action indicates that Shandong forks believed those who are virtual and sublime could become deities after death during Ming and Qing era.The customs of festival can be divided into customs of the time and seasons,and customs of temple fair.In Marriages to Awaken Common People,festivals like yearly festival(about the Chinese New Year),the Lantern Festival,Chong yang Festival(9 September in Lunar calendar),and the Winter Solstice are nationwide common,which indicates the universality and amalgamation of the festival of Shandong amid Ming and Qing period as well as its own feature in detail.Mountain Tai association of pilgrims which is particularized in this book is one important component of Mountain Tai Temple Fair.These depictions open out scenes of temple fair in Shandong amid Ming and Qing era.In addition,along trimming and Introducing forklore depictions in Marriages to Awaken Common People,this paper also discusses the function of these depictions on consummating figures,facilitating the story line,and manifesting author's attitudes.