Research On Yao Sui 's Prose

Yao Sui is an outstanding essayist at the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, and quite famous in the Yuan dynasty and Ming and Qing dynasties. Now, Yao Sui’s work saves in The Mu An Ji thirty-six volumes, of which thirty two volumes of prose, a total of two hundred and ninety-eight. At present, the academic research results not only do not match the proportion of his prose in his paper focused, but also do not match the historical and cultural value of his prose carried. Existing results of investigation also focused his prose theory, but the creation of his prose research is relatively weak. And academic circles lack the overall study of Yao Sui prose. This paper is carefully combs and classifies Yao sui’s prose, and groups the prose which are most representative of Yao sui’s prose thought and artistic values into three categories, including Preface, Jottings and Epitaphs and Biographies. This paper tries to make a comprehensive study on Yao Sui’s prose creation from the three kinds of literary style, in a large number of Yao’s prose works as the research object, contacting the inheritance and the development trend of the history of the Yuan Dynasty prose and combining with the author’s life and the social ideological trends. These articles include the interpretation of the prose thoughts, expressing feelings with friends and family, and describing the world.Yao sui’s Jottings highlight two main values. The one is good at line drawing to depict the scenery. The other one emphasizes on humanistic spirit, including basing on Confucianism to criticize Buddhism, Exposing social evils, and expressing his own feelings.Yao sui’s Epitaphs and Biographies include Epitaphs.Biographies and Xingzhuang. Yao Sui inherits the record and critical spirit to write Epitaphs and Biographies. In the work not only reflects on the history of previous generation, also shows the Yuan Dynasty society. Therefore, his Epitaphs and Biographies provides a large number of real and valuable historical materials about the Gold and Yuan Dynasty for future generations, and have the historical characteristics and value.Yao sui think Wen and Dao are equally important. He adheres to the Tang and song prose tradition so that his prose style is Zong Heng Kai He and Xiong Shen Ya Jian. Its remarkable features are good at argument. As for the prefaces, he combines narrative and argument to make the article more clear, whether it is the first narrative and then argument, or to argument again narrative. On the Jottings, Yao Sui writes from one thing to another thing, and often argument.Even the Epitaphs and Biographies, Yao Sui likes to argue. So some scholars criticize him.Secondly, Yao Sui’s Epitaphs and Biographies have outstanding achievements in characterization. He is good at using a variety of methods to catch the main characteristics of the characters, such as the selection of typical cases, the legendary style of writing, and detail description.Furthermore, Yao Sui’s prose language is simple. No matter to depict the objective image, or to express the subjective thinking; even poetry reviews and evaluation of the characters, the language is not much but very meaningful.Yao Sui’s literary thoughts and prose creation help to change the empty, weak style of prose creation in the late Song Dynasty to the style of peace and aboveboard in the middle of Yuan Dynasty. He is an outstanding essayist at the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty.