Academic Thoughts And Literary: Fang Dongshu's Essay Writings

During the period of Jia qing and Dao guang, Fang Dongshu is a master in Tongcheng School. He wrote a massive of articles and most of them were collected in the Anthology Kao pan ji which is the reliable book to do researches on Fang Dongshu.Since 1980s, researches on Fang Dongshu have become prosperous. Most of these researches were concentrated on Fang's academic thoughts and his culture theories, while seldom researches were about his writing itself. Therefore, I decide to focus on Fang Dongshu's prose writings.First of all, I analyze Fang Dongshu's thoughts through his life. There were four phases: comprehensive in his early time, specialized in the Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Song and Ming Dynasties, practical ideas in his middle ages and integration of different thoughts in his elderly time. There was a coherent thought in all these phases- highly emphasized on studies such as moral, nature and destiny.Secondly, through reviewing the prose, there were three aspects about Fang's academic thoughts. His New Confucian thoughts which claimed to learn real scholars and to combine Han School and Song School were the primary idea. Fang also posited the right studying way which saw School of principle as the tradition and Han School and School of minds as assistances. Then, Fang Dongshu respected both theory and practice. Moreover, he treated Han School in dialectical ways.Thirdly, Fang owned special features in his prose. He thought practical uses like saving the society were the fundamental doctrine in writing articles. He also paid much attention to prose's words and sentences and he banished conformism. He still highly evaluated writings with orderly style. All such characteristics were shown in his prose. And his main writing style was vigorous, while with restrains.Fang Dongshu had been engaged in writing for more than 60 years. Generally speaking, the Anthology Kao pan ji is fully expressed his thoughts and culture achievements. Prose is the most widely used genre in Fang Dongshu's entire life.