On The Formation A Nd Sources Of Huang Tingjian's Cursive Writing

Ever since the Song dynasty, there have been a large body of studies on Huang Tingjian(黄庭坚). However, when it comes to Huang's calligraphy, most of the research focus on his writing thought and writing style, but few delve into his cursive ontology. In this dissertation, we conduct a systematic study of Huang's cursive writing, including both the history and the theory. Our study is based on a combination of the social history of Northern Song Dynasty and the results of Huang's own study. This dissertation contains three parts.The first part analyzes the influence of the social system of Northern Song Dynasty, especially the changes of the imperial examination system and the official-selecting system, on the development of cursive writing. We thoroughly discuss a serial of major factors, including the social culture, the revival of the main spirit, the praises of the moral personality, as well as the advocates of the rational spirit, on the development of Huang's cursive writing. We also discuss the born condition and background of Huang's cursive writing provided by the development of the cursive writing of the early and middle Northern Song Dynasty.The second part discusses the enlightenment of Huang's cursive writing. Through a strict logical deduction, we reason that Huang originated his cursive writing method from Zhou Yue(周越), while the sublimation of Huang's cursive writing was inspired by his father's philosophy of the calligraphy and seal scripts. By comparing the enlightenment of Huang's cursive writing with that of Su Shi(苏轼) and Mi Fu(米芾), we verify that the reason why Su gave up cursive writing is his early formation of a different writing style and ink habit, while Mi loathe cursive writing eventually is because his deep immersion of the ancient style. After that, we discuss the reasons why Huang chose cursive writing in detail. We reason that it is the"splendid immanency"(骨秀)character of Huang that determines his choice of cursive writing.The third part presents a systematic analysis of the relationship between Huang's cursive writing and the other calligraphers, and further clarifies the sources of Huang's cursive writing. We believe that Huang's cursive writing was inspired by Zhou Yue, based on which Huang broke through the cursive writing of Huai Su(怀素) and solved the problem of the cursive method. Huang then learned the Yang Ningshi(杨凝式)style and mastered the"long horizontal line and long diagonal line"(长横孤撇)from Wang Anshi(王安石). Huang also learned from Su Shi and even traced back to Yan Zhenqing(颜真卿)to master the skill of the regular script(楷法). Driven by his"splendid immanency", Huang finally learned from Zhang Xu(张旭)and fit Zhang's"raising and pressing"method (提按笔法) into Zhou, Wang and Su's writing styles, forming the intense personality of "thrill"method(战掣笔法)in the end.In summary, through the historic analysis, logical reasoning and the anatomization of the literature, this dissertation uncovers the mystery of the born and the growth of Huang Tingjian's cursive writing. Although it stands on the person point of view, we hope it sheds some lights of interest. We end this dissertation with a streaming graph to illustrate the whole picture and the milestones Huang Tingjian's cursive writing.