Research On Changes&Progress Of Liu Yi’s Story

Story of Liu Yi narrates that a dragon mail of Dongting Lake requites kindness ofLiu Yi, a Confucian scholar, and they get married eventually, a legend related to love,kindness returning and manito. It portrays characters with full image not only passionateand unswerving dragon mail but also chivalrous Liu Yi and grumpy Qian Tangjun, andpresents a regal life of dragon palace. Under influences of different motifs, it has beenalso improved to perfect, widespread in posterity as different types such as miscellaneousdrama, opera, legend, etc. And the figure modeling, scenario, ideology of theme andnarration of love have been imitated by later generations. With current stored stories ofLiu Yi as objects to study, this article has clarified development and evolution of thestory and further analyzed the progress in all periods.Current research status of Liu Yi’s story is presented simply in the introduction,which shows the utilized research methodology and thought. Change progress of thestory is illustrated totally in four chapters of the body.Research on Liu Yi story first form the novels of the Tang Dynasty form the pointof the Liu Yi. It analyzes the detailed character images and subjects of Biography of LiuYi, which explains the reasons for huge impact and widespread status from the otherviewpoint. Biography of Liu Yi has been complete mature until Tang Dynasty, whosemain character images of dragon mail and Liu Yi, scenario and written mode have beenexamples for posterity in history of literature. Human emotion changes of dragon mail,chivalrous personality presented by Liu Yi, and emotion changes between the two havebeen materials of creation of posterity.Chapter Two Liu Yi motif of the story of carding. It’s the origin problem forBiography of Liu Yi of Tang Dynasty, that is, which motif Biography of Liu Yi has beenaffected by. Based on motif segmentation issued by Stice Thompson, the motif ofBiography of Liu Yi can be classified into three classes: the first is “dragon mailrepaying kindness”, namely, dragon mail pledging to get married with benefactor; thesecond is “clicking objects”, namely, the way to communicate with unearthly worldbeing to click or knock on some objects; the third is “Deity of Water entrusting somebody to pass letters”. Chapter Two centers on these three motifs, analyzing andgeneralizing the previous text before Biography of Liu Yi of Tang Dynasty.With standpoint Liu Yi’s story of Song&Yuan Dynasty, Chapter Three analyzesimages of dragon mail and Liu Yi, and changes of theme thoughts in different articles ofSong&Yuan Dynasty. Current stored articles of Song Dynasty are similar to Biographyof Liu Yi in term scenario of classical Chinese novel, or partially extracted fromBiography of Liu Yi. So the trace of Song novels to copy Biography of Liu Yi is veryserious. Developed into Yuan Dynasty, the much success of Liu Yi’s story is Yuandrama based on the story. The body introduces contents of two Yuan dramas and theversions firstly and then analyzes changes of themes and characters.With standpoint of Liu’s story of Ming&Qing Dynasty, Chapter Four analyzesimages of dragon mail and Liu Yi, and changes of theme thoughts in different articles ofMing&Qing Dynasty, which is researched with three separated periods: Liu Yi’s storyof Ming Dynasty, transition period between Ming&Qing, and Qing Dynasty. Thethought to influence era mostly is non-confucianism in Ming&Qing Dynasty, such as“to uphold justice and destroy desire”,“keeping chastity being prior to starving to death”,etc. With the profound influence of non-confucianism, Liu Yi’s story created in this stagecould not go beyond Biography of Liu Yi in Yuan Dynasty.With comparisons to research between portrait orientation (Liu Yi’s story of thesame period) and landscape orientation (Liu Yi’s story of different periods), thedevelopment thread is cleared out in term of time and the characteristics of Liu Yi’s storyof different periods are summarized, which is expected to be helpful for further researchof progress of Liu Yi’s story to expand depth and extend of the story.