A Study Of The Chinese Story Genre Mother Ghost Nurturing A Child

Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story is a genre which takes the plot of the ghost of a dead mother comes back to raise her young child as the core motif. This thesis based on multitudinous variant data, by using the theories of story typology, matriarchal right and folk belief, to study the general evolution features, geographic distribution, morphologic structure characters and cultural implications of Chinese Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story both diachronically and synchronically. This article has three parts, including the Introduction, the Main Text and the Appendix.Firstly, the Introduction reviewed the domestic and overseas research status of Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story. Then, by introspect the history of academic study of the genre, to discuss the feasibility of associating Chinese Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story with the folk belief theory and matriarchal right theory. At last, explained the research purpose and methods, contents, and data sources of this paper.The first chapter, at the beginning, investigated the evolution progress and features of Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story. The genre was maturing gradually during the period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to Song Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasties, it presented a tendency of realization and compound-rization. During the Qing dynasties and Modern Age, the legend-rization is the main signatures of the evolution progress of the genre during this period. Secondly, based on the method of statistical classification and mapping, it illustrate the geographical distribution of Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story. In the whole country, the Story is mainly distributed in seven provinces, which has the geographical distribution of strip and punctiform.Based on variant textual materials of the Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story, and combined with the previous outstanding research results, the second chapter made a synchronic genre analysis towards the Chinese Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story. This Story Genre has two subtypes, which has the feature of unbalancedness, stability and variability in the development, the plot structure and the structure of motif. The artistic features are as follows:the peculiar imagination and fantasy, extensive generality and symbolic, illustrating the artistic reality via the grotesque art images, reproducing the life reality via the great and selfless love.The last chapter, firstly, diachronically inspected the cultural reason on the transmutation of the image of Mother Ghost from the documents. The image of Mother Ghost has experienced the transformation from a vicious and evil character into a warm and tender mother character, which has a connection with the influence of Buddhist stories, the values of Chinese nation, and the creation of literati. Secondly, based on the theory of matriarchal right, folk belief, this part explores the cultural implication and folklore connotation of "Mother" and "Child" in the Mother Ghost Nurturing a Child Story. The cultural connotation of "Mother" and "Child" is mainly reflected in the spirit of the Chinese nation, the patriarchal idea, and the matriarchal right. The reveal of the folklore connotation on this story genre is mainly based on the impetration of smoothly giving birth to a baby, the belief on Cui Sheng NiangNiang, and the puerpera funeral custom which shares a sense of ceremony.