The Study On Ai Nanying

Ai Nanying had many roles in his life:literatus, eight-leg essay editor, society leader, and fighter. But previous research on Ai Nanying is penurious. Discussing Ai Nanying’s life, thoughts, works, publishing activities, social activities, friends and enemies, this paperreveals his achievements and significance in the history. In the section discussing Ai Nanying’s life and thoughts, the author did detailed research on his family, exam and resisting against the Qing dynasty. His thoughts had been divided into literary, historical and political ideas. Ai Nanying’s publishing of eight-leg essays was the most important activity in his life. I did research on his literary theory according to his publishing activities of eight-leg essay anthologies, which had multiple meanings for AiNanying. According to displayed Ai Nanying’s works and writing abstract of his works, I proved Ai Nanying was a learned literatus. Especially my study on the versions of Ai Nanying’s Collected Works of Tianyongzi, make up the shortfall and correct the errors of the researches of this book. This paper studies the Yuzhang society from its foundation to its disintegration, elaborating the relationship in publishing eight-leg essays between Yuzhang society and other societies in late Ming, such as the Fu society. The last section studies the relationship between Ai Nanying and other famous literatis, such as Tang Xianzu, Zheng Yuanxun, Chen Hongxu, Zhou Zhong, Chen Zilong, and the other leaders of the Yuzhang society, which reflects Ai Nanying’s thoughts and the activities of collecting and compiling eight-leg essays.