The Research Of Su Tian Jue’s Biography

Su Tianjue, the famous writer at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, creates 119 articles of literary biography in total, which are all collected in the essays "Zi River Presentation", and these biographies accounts for about one third of the total number of his classical works. Though there is ample research achievements pertain to the study of Su Tianjue and his works, no special attention is directed to the exploration into biography as an independent style. This paper, associated with the cultural habits of the Yuan Dynasty literature retro trend as well as Su’s growth and literary concepts, mainly analyzes Su’s parameters of choosing characters of his biographies, the ideological value and the artistic features of those biographies.This paper consists of four parts. The first part expounds on how Su chooses the main character of his biographies. He emphasizes one’s story, performance and character, which serve as the principle in choosing his main characters, breaking the standard in the Jin Dynasty when official discretion is regarded as the only parameter. The characters in Su’s biographies can be grouped into three categories and they are competent officials with loyalty and honesty, scholars with diligence and determination, and virtuous hermit and dutiful son with noble character, which are in a close connection to his own career experiences, teacher-student relationship and concepts concerning hermit. With Su’life trajectories, interpersonal relationship with teachers and friends as well as his ideas towards hermit as three analytic dimensions, the author explains the Su’s choices of main characters in his biographies.The second part is devoted to the discussion of the thought value in Su’s biographies. Su insists that writings are to convey truth, so his biographies are of high and profound ideological value. On the one hand, Su highlights the practical Confucian thoughts in his biographies, which values the idea of people-oriented and Confucian culture; on the other hand, Su, equipped with the truth-seeking spirit, tries to realistically depict the politics, economy and culture in the Yuan Dynasty.The third part elaborates on the artistic features of Su’s biographies. Su successfully shapes images of the character with distinctive personality through utilizing typical examples and contrasting between the ancient times and his times. Besides, he incorporates argumentation and expression in narration, which is conductive to achieving the artistic effect of embedding both reason and emotion in articles. Furthermore, being terse and skillful, the language style of the biography presents Su’s linguistic features, endowing his biographies a unique artistic charm.The last part accounts for why Su tries to create biography. The creation of biographies seeks for its practical value, which differs from the cultural fashion of literary revivalism in the Yuan Dynasty; meanwhile, Su incorporates a sense of being a historian into his creation, aiming at synthesizing literature and history so as to record history in literature.