Research On Bao Zhao 's Prose

Zhao Bao (416?-466), Donghainese, who lived in the Liu Song period of Southern dynasties. He was poor and suffered from sicknesses throughout his lifetime. His official career was not always smooth and well-off, however, he achieved great accomplishment in literature creation. Zhao Bao, Lingyun Xie and Yanzhi Yan were known as the’Three Masters during Yuanjia Period’for their great achievement in Poetry. He was a crucial poet who inherited Cao Cao and Zhen Liu’s poetic style, simultaneously impacted on Bai Li and Fu Du’s poetic creation. In addition, Zhao Bao created a large number of splendid prose works, which displayed extraordinarily rich content and distinct individuality, and consequently had a high literature and aesthetic value.This thesis explores the academic origins of Zhao Bao’s literary creation, from the times he lived in to researching his prose works, including introduction, body text and conclusion. The introduction includes two sections, the first section defines the research object, which is Zhao Bao’s all existing articles except his poetry. The second section reviews the acquired research outcomes. The third section introduces the research content and methods.Chapter One traces back to the origins of Zhao Bao’s prose works and how they influenced his works. The first section analyses the features of Liu Song era and the academic atmosphere; the second section makes textual research on his life experience and social relationships; the third section traces the source of Bao Zhao’s thoughts and academic viewpoints.Chapter Two studies the content of Zhao Bao’s prose works. Zhao Bao’s prose works possess dual characteristics of realism and romanticism. As he cared for social issues and lives of low socioeconomic people, unmasking social injustice and darkness, his prose works display the sense of realism. Zhao Bao also produced articles to sing praises of the ruling class, voicing his desires for people to live better lives and achieve higher positions. Nonetheless, "romanticism" comes from Bao Zhao’s representation of his personal life and emotions, expressing his thoughts and feelings through natural sceneries and objects. Zhao Bao’s prose works are not only rich in content, but they are reflections of the era and portrayals of his own life.Chapter Three studies the artistic features of Zhao Bao’s prose works. Under the influence of literature trends during the ’Six Dynasties’ period, his prose articles showed the characteristics of aestheticism, elegance, embellishment and elaboration. He strived for a distinctive and unique style, abandoning traditional languages and routines. Zhao Bao produced works though feelings and thoughts, presenting profound and spectacular connotations and spirits. Moreover, he widely used rhetoric skills to enrich his prose works, making them dynamic and magnificent.Chapter Four probes into the influence of Zhao Bao’s prose creation. His prose works affected many litterateurs during the Northern-Southern Dynasties, such as Yue Shen, Yan Jiang, Tiao Xie, Xin Yu and Hongjing Tao. His prose works escaped from the superficial and inflated style of aestheticism literature, and appeared powerful and vigorous. His works also increased the depth and thickness of sentimentalism literature. The article Climbing the Mountain Dalei and Writing to Sister started the paradigm of writing letters with rhythmic prose, a writing technique that made vast description of natural scenery in a letter, had a great influence on the development of landscape letters. Nonetheless, Rhapsody on Wucheng had transformed sentimentalism writing for ’Metropolis Fu’, receiving high reputation in literary history. It established the image of ’Wucheng’, recalling antiquity and reflecting today’s mourning.Lastly, the conclusion summarizes the main ideas of each chapter, meanwhile affirming the outstanding achievements of Zhao Bao’s prose works and its influence.