Ming And Qing Dynasties, The Wujiang Yip Family And Cultural Life And Literature

At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, as one of the most distinguished families in Wu Jiang, the Ye's family lived a life which was representative to all intellectual families in the age of recent antiquity. To read, chant poetry, make friends and amuse themselves was their basic living pattern. Their daily life was closely related to their literary creations and so formed life modified by literature and literature influenced by life.Using a number of historical data and local documents, this thesis tries to reproduce objectively the daily life style and literary activities in the noblemen's families in the Southern area of Jiangsu Province whose representative was the Ye's, analyze deeply the interaction of their cultural lives and literature, and make an exploration of its contributing factors and realistic meanings."The Introduction" concentrates on the conclusion of the backgroundinformation of the Ye's family-the special social background at the end of theMing Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty and the cultural background of the South area of Jiang Su province. This part also sums up the content of the cultural life of the Ye's and its contributing factors, makes a review of the studies in the academic circles and advances the important meaning of the influence this cultural life leaves to the development of literature.The first chapter "The Investigation of the Ye's Family in Fen Hu During the Ming and Qing Dynasties" mainly clears up the lineage, family members and literary creations of the Ye's family. Therefore this chapter foreshadows this family's cultural life and literature and the contributing factors which will be discussed in the later part.The second chapter "The cultural life of the Ye's Family"draws support from the relative background documents and the literary writings of the Ye's to describe roughly their aesthetic daily life style. This style reflects the mergence of literature and life during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The formation of the literary andaesthetic daily life and the mundane literature shows fully the penetration of a kind of trend of thought in literature and art —"to learn from the ancient masters and to restore the elegant"— into the cultural life.The third chapter "the literary association activities of the Ye's Family"again uses the historical documents to explain the relative association activities of the Ye's Family, such as to incorporate with other intellectuals, to meet friends with their writings, to write preface and postscript for each other, to edit collected works. It discusses the positive effect of this interaction to the spread, development of literature, and especially female literature. The interaction also causes the change of the critical angles: from the ways of creation to the aesthetic appreciation. "The Origin of poetry"written by Ye Xie is the product of this historical and cultural background.The fourth chapter analyzes the contributing factors of the cultural life and literature of the Ye's family from several points of view: the cultures in the South area of Jiang Su province, the trend of thought in literature and art during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the context of alliance between elite families.The conclusion part summarizes the characters, the era and regional background of the cultural life and literature of the Ye's family, and also its important influence on the literary development and the change of critic point of view. Lastly, the thesis expounds the meaning of the reference to a controversial topic in modern literature and art circles'- the aesthetization of daily life.