The Comparative Study Of Fables In The Zhuang-zi And The Strategies Of The Warring States

The fables of the Pre-Qin Period are precious pearls in Chinese literary heritage. Fables in Zhuang-zi and Stratagems of the Warring States have many distinguishing features, some are serious, some are humorous, but they are all thought-provoking. This essay compares the fables of the two works in many ways, hoping to grasp the ideological content of the two books in a more detail way and learn to feel the art in them,and at the same time bring the matureness stages in light. This essay mainly includes four chapters:Chapter One: Compare the source and the image of the fables of Zhuang-zi and Stratagems of the Warring States. After comparing, it is easy to get that fables in Zhuang-zi are more self-centered in source and images, it adopts a lot of fairy tales and fair-tale-thought to make the fables more colorful. Most of the images in Zhuang-zi are disassimilated and somehow exaggerated. But fables in Stratagems of the Warring States are more generous in images, they appear the variety of forms and have a strong sense of life. Most of the sources and the images combined with daily life and social reality.Chapter Two: Compare the ideological contents of the two works in politics, life, moral and values ways. The ideological content of Stratagems of the Warring States is miscellaneous, but its theme is that being a successful man,there are two ways, one is to fight for power, the next is to live like a hermit, while fables in Zhuang-zi put a lot of emphasis on the reality-surpassed and utility-surpassed attitude, it also explore the meaning and the value of life in the spiritual world. Though the fables in Zhuang-zi and Stratagems of the Warring States have one thing in common, that is denying Confucian virtue and morality, their ideologies inside are totally different.Chapter Three: Compare the ways of arrangement and organization of the fables in Zhuang-zi and Stratagems of the Warring States. Most of the fables in this two books are lard in the articles. What is different is that the in the former work ,the fables are larded in the article in groups, but in the latter one, the fable is interspersed in the article singly. The different arrangements make the different expression effects. When it comes to the organization, they are exactly the same, as they both adopt the dialogue form to organize the fables. The fables are always brought up in the dialogue, and in the fables itself, there are many dialogues too.Chapter Four: The fables in Zhuang-zi and Stratagems of the Warring States are still popular because of its distinguishing features. It is much related to its literary technique of expression. This chapter mainly compares the imagination, description,comparison, and rhetoric (such as analogy, metaphor, rhetorical question and so on) in the two works, in order to analyse the artistic charm of the fables in a deeper way.