The Folk Ballad And Proverb Of Ming Dynasty

The folk ballad and proverb concerned in this thesis refer to the popularsentences which were born and disseminated among the people. The sentences couldalso reflect the general social conditions and express the emotional longings of thepeople of that time. That is, the folk ballad and proverb coming into existence becauseof an individually incident will not be involved here, popular as they might be.The folk ballad and proverb were disseminated orally; some of them gotrepresented in written forms and passed to the descendents, but they still contain moretruthfulness compared with written historic records of other patterns. This thesis sortsout and classifies the folk proverbs in Ming Dynasty, and then generalizes the societyof the Ming Dynasty in the eyes of the common people.The first part collects and sorts out the existing folk balladsand proverb of MingDynasty with classification and focuses on those frequently recorded in the ancientbooks for the purpose of seeking out the most representative political issue concernedamong the common people of the Ming Dynasty. The second part attempts to showthe imperial politics with the folk balladsand proverb, unscramble the concerned ofcommon people with the imperial politics through folk ballad and proverb of theemperor, the literati and officialdom and a special group members of the imperialpolitics, the eunuchs, and thus reveal the features of this kind of folk ballad andproverb and the psychological moves of the common people. The third part mainlydiscusses the relationship between folk ballad and proverb and local government.Although the local government stayed far away from the decision-making unit of thecountry, they had more direct influence on the life of the common people. What’smore, the military affairs also belong to politics in that they were decided andstrategized by the upper class but affected most among the ordinary people. Resultedfrom this, the folk ballad and proverb of military affairs are classified into this part. Inaddition, the author attempts to rearrange and analyze the geographical distributionfeatures of local folk ballad and proverb. The fourth mainly deals with the rules andprinciples reflected in the folk ballad and proverb. There were onerous regulations inthe Ming Dynasty. According to the degree of people’s concern, there are mainly twokinds, the folk ballad and proverb related to the imperial examination system, whichmostly expose the expectation and divination of common people for the examination,and the folk ballad and proverb indicating maladministration. The people suffered alot from maladministration but got no vent and often attack in folk ballad and proverbto express their resentfulness. Meanwhile, this kind of folk ballad and proverb couldalso be referred as the foundation of correcting the social abuse by the ruling class.Finally, with the classification and conclusion above, it can be realized that the folk ballad and proverb in the Ming Dynasty had a special concern for specificindividuals and events in the imperial politics. The folk ballad and proverb related tothe current emperor were mostly featured with predictions of apocryphal sayingswhich more often than not appeared during time of turbulence or the change ofemperor, serving as tool of power-seeking people to take advantage of the will ofcommon people to pursuit political purposes. While the folk ballad and proverb firmlyexpress the mind of common people always aimed at appreciating or attackingofficials and eunuchs, especially attacking the eunuch group that led to terriblepolitical conditions. In the aspect of local politics, the expressions of folk proverbwere simpler and plainer but conveying more emotions. There exists a link betweenthe degree of circulation and prosperity of folk ballad and proverbs and the level ofeconomic development as well. As a conclusion, not only did the folk ballad andproverb in Ming Dynasty serve as a vivid reflection of political and culturaldevelopment at that time, they also functioned as a concrete expression of people’swill during that time; they could have influence on the politics of that period of timeaccordingly.