The Reversion Research On "Heavenly Questions"

ABSTRACT:"Heavenly Questions" is considered as a poem composed by Romantic poet Qu Yuan in Late-Warring States period. It appeared firstly in "Songs of the South", collected by Liu Xiang and the commented by Wang Yi. The poem consists mostly of querying sentences, containing170questions,namely373sentences or1560words. The passionate sentences and plentiful emotions, contents related to the formation of heaven and earth, the universe, the history of the rise and fall and everything. Lots of different explanation have emerged,as a result of its disordered text and weird accounts. The domestic research can be divided into two periods according to the2000years of research history of "Heavenly Questions". The previous period is from Western Han Dynasty to Late Ming. Its achievements are mainly in areas of textual research, which has laid a solid foundation for later research. The latter period is from Late Ming to now, when scholars start to conduct multidisciplinary studies on the basis of traditional methods.Textual problems are the primary questions to be solved in the study of "Heavenly Questions". Great obstacles are caused by the disordered bamboos and different versions. Origin Research is a hot spot in the study of "Heavenly Questions ".Despite of many different oppinions such as "Witch history","Myth", and "Questions","The Theory of Inscription on Paintings" is the most authoritative opinion acknowledged by most scholars such as Wang Yi, Ding Yan and Sun Zuoyun. A method of reversion is adopted in this thesis. Reversion concludes three levels:Firstly, the structure of original texts is discussed by divesting its poetic form and interrogative grammar. Then, the prototype, source and fundamental nature are probed in-depth through comprehensive studies. At last, its ideological connotations and patterns of thought are presented via the meaning itself contained in "Heavenly Questions".Mythology is an important branch of the humanities and social sciences today. It is a newly-developed interdisciplinary study which takes myths as its preliminary studying objects."Standing on the meeting point of all disciplines", it has made great progress in nearly a century, and it is linked with philology, literature, philosophy, religion, art, cultural anthropology, psychology, linguistics and folklore. Large number of scholars devoted to mythology had a huge impact on academic circle since the20th century. Mythology in China started with the surge of thoughts in i.ate Qing and had accepted the hermenseutics theory, myth archetypal criticism theory, structure theory, and many other advanced theoretical methods. As a result, great progress has been achieved till nowadays This thesis attempts to conduct a comprehensive research by adopting folklore, mythology and many other theoretical approaches, so as to present a fresh and reasonable explanation for those traditional mysteries of "Heavenly Questions".