Owned By The Monument

Gui Youguang is the one of the most famous ancient Chinese prose writer in mid-term of Ming dynasty, his work has maintained its reputation as "the first class of Ming dynasty’s prose". Not only the unity of form and spirit、sincere feelings, but also cover a wide range、 distinctively. He rated the model of all kinds of writings. The academic circle has much research on him and it’s fruitful recent years. The majority productions mainly focus on his own histories、prose writing、theory of literature、position and influences on history. Researchers did not pay enough attention to Gui’s literary form of epitaph, the exiting revelent study scattered other research papers, it haven’t become a study trend on scale. For that reason, this article reveal national、social affairs and female problem in mid-term Ming dynasty through digging academic background of epitaph’s creation. At the same time, the article analyses its cultural implication and artistic characteristics, summing up its creative achievements, discuss its important role in epitaph’s history.This article’s main part is divided into three parts. The former introduction, the latter conclusion. The details are as follows:The introduction will generally describe the research motivation, briefly introduce the current situation of Gui’s epitaph. It sums up the aim and meaning through the analyze of research’s conclusion.Chapter one, there are three aspects to show Gui’s cultural background of epitaph creation. First of all, there is a long history in ancient china to raise a monument, as far as the ming dynasty, it become more prosperous, which build a great circumstance for Gui’s creation for a large number of epitaph. Secondly, in the mid-term of Ming dynasty, academic schools contend each other, it brings civilized gathering prosperity, and also a new change of literature tone, poet and prose distinctions comes a new period. All those things play a important role in Gui’s creation of epitaph. Lastly, Gui has a profound literary attainment. He put out a large number of incisive literary proposal. These give him theoretical guidance. Besides, Gui has a deep comprehension on "the historical records". He learned a lot from Sima qian, which shows in his productions.Chapter two, this part will discuss the ideological connotation combining his whole life. Gui lived in the Kun shan’s neighborhood where people are always hurt by Japanese pirates, which currently show in Gui’s work. Gui has attend imperial examination eight times without success, which he get a sad fate in official career. Finally, he paid more and more attention on "difficulty of achieving the ambitious" and "imperial examination to select talents". It turns out many social affairs, such as "Japanese pirate"、"disadvantage of imperial examination". In addition, Gui has suffer death and parting and sorrow, his mother、wife、children friends all leave away, which were the deepest sadness in his heart. That bring morn to his work. When he is doing this, he gave expression(resignation and depressed) to his audience through his work. Gui also shows his attitude to female, which looks like solicitude on housewives and respect on rigorous female. We can see the society and female’s daily life through Gui’s work, which dig out deep affections from one’s inner heart.Chapter three, this part analyses epitaph’s structure、linguistic、narrative art. From the point of structure, the epitaph falls into flexible length. He designed different modes and structures according to different people and things in order to get enough space to express inner feelings. From the point of linguistic, it tells a story smoothly in a natural、simple way. His work set many examples with singing, which cause reader’s sadness. From the point of narrative, Gui is good at the use of focusing, grab tomb owner’s personalities, portrait people’s figure. For those epitaph unfinished stories, he often draw difference from ShiJi through referring each other in order to add tomb owner’s life data and morn other friends in one epitaph. At the same time, in choosing life stories, Gui respects the truth, which don’t make it better.The last Chapter, it puts Gui’s epitaph into historical river to study its meaning. Through studying masters before Ming dynasty, it card Gui’s big contribution of transfer literature style and broaden subject matter, which give Gui a fair evaluation.After this article, there is a "Gui Youguang’s epitaph list"...