A Comparative Research Of "the Literary Mind And Carving Dragons" And "the Anthology"

The mourning style of writing is a collective designation of several sorts of practical style of writing. It originated from the ancient ritual activities, and was influenced deeply by Chinese traditional etiquette system, so occupied a very imp-ortant position in Chinese traditional social life. Such writing style mostly narrated th e deceased’s descent and life experience, enumerated their deeds and merits, or described the living’s tribute and memory to the deceased, so as to express the sad fe-elings of the author.In the Three Dynasties of antiquity, the rudiment of mourning writing style appeared in varieties of ritual ceremonies. During Qin and Han Dynasties, eulogy, i-nscription, funeral oration of mourning writing style had been forming, and there had been some excellent works. At the end of Han, and during Wei and Jin Dynasties, some important components of the mourning writing style, such as lament, elegiac, biographical sketch and epitaph had been forming in succession. In researching the development of the mourning writing style, "The Literary Mind and Carving dragons" and "The Anthology", which were respectively the highest-achieved literary theoretical works and literary anthology in the Six Dynasties, had a high reference value, so they could be compared and reffered with each other. Firstly, to look over the categories of the the two books, they are different in character, but hold the same view in naming the mourning style of writing. The naming of eulogy, inscription, lament, lament verse, funeral oration and elegiac is exactly the same. Secondly, to look over the scope, eulogy, inscription and uneral oration, which are the main components of the mourning writing style, cover the same scope. And The scope of elegiac, lament and biographical sketch have overlap.Since LiuXie and XiaoTong’s literary concepts were not quite the same, the character of "The Lliterary Mind and Carving Dragons" and "The Anthology" were accordingly not the same. Therefore, the entry points were also different in expositing and excerpting each sort of the mourning style of writing. As a literary the oretical works, "The Literary Mind and Carving Ddragons" emphasized starting from the source of stylistics to summarize the stylistic rheology. Liuxie tended to the typical articles and prefered to the simple and elegance diction while he selected texts and took example of the the mourning writing style. LiuXie advocated to comply with the reality and prefer simpliness and briefness to hyperbole and prettification in writing the characters’ detailed deeds. But in the lyrical expression of the mourning writing style, he did not exclude the rhetoric such as parallelism, allusion, embellishment and other techniques. XiaoTong’s conception of literature and stylistics was all showed through "The Anthology" and its preface. As a selection of the literature works, "The Anthology" is conceptual clarity and well-demarcated in naming and distinction of the the mourning writing style. XiaoTong paid great attention to the literary aesthetic, so showed his preference to the works full of literariness in his selected works of the mourning writing style. Therefore, he thought highly of rhythm, embellishment, allusion, and parallelism when he selected the representative works of the mourning writing style."The Literary Mind and Carving Dragons" and "The Anthology" had both commmon and different points in elucidating and selecting the works of the mourning writing style, which was because of the environment of times of LiuXie and XiaoTong. Compared with the Three Dynasties of antiquity, Qin and Han, in Wei, Jin and the Six Dynasties period the social environment was strife-torn and the cutural ideology was mixed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, "grief is beauty" as the social artistic fashion consequently had grown. The mourning style of writing changed in character:narrative declined, lyric increased, applicability weakened and literariness strengthened. Such changes of the mourning style of writing during this period were reflected truthfully in the research conclusion of "the literary mind and carving dragons" and the literature works selected in "the Anthology".