The Study Of Wang Tong’s Literary Thoughts

As a famous pundit in the Sui Dynasty, Wang Tong lived his life in a period when the culture between the north and the south began to exchange and interact. This cultural communication brought collision of literature concept. In this situation, Wang tong raised his own literature position when the literary world in early Sui Dynasty was filled with the Southern Dynasties’ ornate, floweriness literal style. His literature position has a very important significance in the development of literary ideology in the Sui and early Tang Dynasty. So, in this paper, I want to make a comprehensive analysis of Wang’s literary thoughts.The article is divided into three chapters.The first chapter is to explore the source of his literary thoughts. Analysis comes in three aspects:the historical background of the literal style changes in the Sui Dynasty,the souce of his family tradition of learning, and his philosophy that ’Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism’ can be combined together. Through the analysis, I hope to graspe the causes in the generating process of his literay thoughts so that I can better understand its connotation.The second chapter is the interpretation of the basic connotation of Wang’s literary thoughts. Wang Tong is a famous thinker in the Sui Dynasty. He praised and pursued Confucianism and even had a reputation of’Confucius Wang’. Thus his literary thoughts is rooted in Confucianism, manifesting as a full retro of literary concept. Specifically, first of all he attached importance to the relationship between literature and deontology; secondly, he put forward a view of literature and history that ’san jing’ shows hitory, especially discussed the ’poem’ and raised a poetics view that ’poem can show rise and decline’; at last, from the perspective of literature and morality, he raised a theory that’the writing mirrors the writer’.The third chapter discusses the influence of Wang’s literary thoughts,which had a great impact at that time. It not only affected his family, but also had a very important effect on the the poetry in zhenguan. The analysis in this chapter aims at explore its position in the history of literary thoughts in the Sui and early Tang Dynasty.Wang’s literary thoughts is typical in the literary world in the Sui Dynasty, but scholars have always focused more on the study of Wang’s political,philosophy and Confucianism thoughts, while less attention is paid to his literary thoughts. So in this paper Ⅰ choose Wang’s literary thoughts as the study object and analyse its origin, connotation and influence, in order to show its retro style and criticism in the special period when relatively the style of writing weren’t unified in the Sui Dynasty.