Yuan Jie’s Travel Notes About Mountains And Rivers And Topography

Travel notes about mountains and rivers is a distinctive category in Chinese ancient prose, which is formed owing to the interaction between different factors and their continuous integration. The origin of the travel notes about mountains and rivers can be traced back to the "records" and "notes" in historiography. To depict beautiful mountains and rivers has been the major content of topographical works and the geographic records in the early period gave priority to the mountains, rivers and territory as well as the local goblins, upholding usefulness. In the Wei Jin, South and North Dynasty, with the awakening of literary consciousness and the evolution of the aesthetic thought of landscape, the topographical works had been characterized by the mutual integration and penetration between geography and literature, which marked the germination of travel notes about mountains and rivers. The topographical writers in the Jin and Song Dynasty have greatly broadened the later writers’ horizon and inspired their aesthetic thought of landscape with their aesthetic attitude, the image of mountains and rivers created in their works and the application of prose language in topographical works. However, the landscape prose in topographical works can’t be regarded as an independent literary style; the real and independent travel notes about mountains and rivers are established by Yuan Jie at the turn of the Prosperous Tang Dynasty and the Mid-Tang Dynasty. Yuan Jie is the pioneer of the ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty; he devoted to creating prose and created a lot of travel notes on mountains and rivers such as Notes on Youxi and Notes on Hanting, etc. He shouldered the mission of establishing and developing the independent literary style of travel notes about mountains and rivers and made ground-breaking contribution to the development of travel notes literature. In the age of Liu Zongyuan, the creation of travel notes on mountains and rivers had gradually come to perfection in ideological thought, artistic technique, language rhetoric and even article style, etc. ushering in a new development stage.The paper is mainly divided into four chapters:The first chapter mainly elaborates on the development of landscape tendency and literary meaning in the topographical works of different stages. Priority is given to illustrating the expression of literature and landscape tendency in the topographical works of Wei Jin, South and North Dynasty. Meanwhile, the significant effect of topography on the formation of travel notes about mountains and rivers is summarized.The second chapter investigates the creation background of Yuan Jie’s travel notes about mountains and rivers. It’s owing to the influence of historical background and family environment that Yuan Jie shouldered the mission of establishing and developing the independent literary style of travel notes about mountains and rivers, which is also a reflection of the writer’s creation sprit and talent. Therefore, the analysis is mainly carried out from three perspectives, i.e. the family atmosphere of yearning for mountains and rivers and personal life experience, the exploitation of written narration style by the ancient prose writers in Mid-Tang Dynasty and the wide spread of Shui Jing Zhu (Commentary on the Waterways Classic) and reference books in the Tang Dynasty.The third chapter probes into the effect of topographical works on Yuan Jie’s creation of travel notes about mountains and rivers by studying how Yuan Jie’s travels notes have inherited and developed the topographical works on mountains and rivers.The fourth chapter summarizes the similarities between Yuan Jie’s travel notes about mountains and rivers and Liu Zongyuan’s travel notes about mountains and rivers, explores how Liu Zongyuan had developed the travel notes about mountains and rivers, and analyzes the new characteristics of the travel notes created by the writers in Mid-Tang Dynasty other than Yuan Jie and Liu Zongyuan.