Fables Cultural Connotations

Chinese allegory originates from ancient times, enjoys a long history and stands out prominently in Chinese classical literature. Pre-Qin dynasty is the beginning, and also the first. flourishing time. Meanwhile, the Chinese society was experiencing turbulent change, which led to the fast development of art. A lot of allegory writers showed up, they generated numerous articles with flexible methods and different styles to reflect the social environment. This essay tries to explain the factors resulted in the achievements of pre-Qin allegory and how these factors influence the style and the methods those writers adopted. This will be achieved by analyzing historical reality, traditional culture and literature itself in pre-Qin Dynasty.The first appearance of pre-Qin allegory is in the end of ChunQiu times, then it experienced fast development in early ZhanGuo times and finally well-formed in later ZhanGuo. At that time, China was enduring large social reform and transition. Such social background provided the historical condition for the development of allegory, and also brought up the creators of pre-Qin allegory 'Shi'. Encouraged by the free social atmosphere, 'Shi' widely adopted allegory as an effective means to propagandize their doctrines. On the other hand, the rational spirit of 'TianRenHeYi' ( the harmony of human and nature ) and thinking pattern 'YiXingJianLi' ( doctrine must embody in reality ) in traditional culture also boosted its development. Furthermore, like other literalities, allegory has a close inter-relation with other upper-architect and social ideology such as politics, legal system, religion, ethics, science and art. It reflects the needs, tendency and pursuit of every social classes, political groups, and ideological schools. Pre-Qin allegory was getting flourish with the booming of the exponents of the various schools of thought, thus its expressional styles were influenced by different thoughts supported by various schools. Accordingly, the difference among various schools in tendency, politics and social attitude were fully embodied in their allegory, hence resulted in extraordinary difference in expressional styles and philological manner.