Study Of The Literary Theory On Biographies From Songshu By Shenyue

Shenyue was a influential writer, historiographer and phonologist in the Northern andSouthern Dynasties.Firstly he wrote a lot of poems which could be on a par with that ofXieTiao.The other artistic works also obtained high achievement which highlighted theirlanguage rhythm.Secondly his thoughts on literature were multitudinous while scattered. Onlysome historical data he wrote could give us access to these thoughts. Songshu is a biographicalhistorical book written by Shuyue, containing his literary theory. This paper aims to make acomprehensive analysis on the literary theory of Shenyue extracted from Songshu on the basis ofthe existing research.There are three parts in the thesis which includes introduction, text andconclusion.Introduction mainly disscused about his life and literary achievements. Introductionsummarized the theory of literature and art in Songshu and combed research status of the songbook from the20century to now. It can demonstrates the value of the subject. There are threeparts in the text. The main contents are as follows:First, Songshu attached much importance toboth form and emotion. Shenyue claimed that form and emotion were both indispensable andform served emotion. Hence he put forward a famous literary theory----arranging language withemotion and modifing emotions with language.Second,Shenyue put forwards anotherwell-known theory about rhythm in Songshu which played an important role in the developmentof literature.The paper will unclose Shenyue’s main viewpoints and contributions to the rhythmictheory as well as its development.Third, from the evaluation he gave to the people in LiusongDynasty, we may know that he thought highly of erudite men who could do researchprofoundly.With respect to his viewpoint about the history of literature, we may refer to thebiography of Xie Lingyun in Songshu in which Shenyue demonstrated the development ofliterary histroy from Han and Wei Dynasty to Song and Jin Dynasty. Forth, Shuyue selectedsome articles containing other thoughts towards literary theory. Although they are not originalideas of Shenyue, they are fairly appreciated by him.The epilogue is the conclusion of the thesisin which the paper summarizes the value of Shenyue’s literary theory.