Research On Zeng Guofan's View Of Literature And Tao

ZengGuofan is a model of "inner cultivation and exterior action",which pursued by Chinese intellectuals.In his entire life,he respected the Neo-Confucianism and emphasized the function of moral education,but he is not limited to the study of Song school.He extensively absorbed the long history of Han school and tried to govern a country by using Confucianism to mediate argues between the Han and Song school.The literary proposition of ZengGuofan closely related to the theory of Neo-Confucianism,which emphasizes pragmatism.He has a strong personality and saint is his ideal personality.ZengGuofan is a student of the master Tang Jian,while he has an independent thinking about literature.In his early years,ZengGuofan put the function that used the articles to show one's thoughts of literature in a first place and emphasized that the literary creations should have a rich moral foundation and the moral principle of the creations should be given priority.On this basis,he advocated that absorb the advantages of the parallel prose,from which we can see his literary theory has an obvious utilitarian tendency.In the eighth year of Xian Feng,he began to writing diary again.His academic thought gradually growing mature as the rich of the life experience.He put forward that obtain both the form and content is difficult,so attached more importance to the aesthetic characteristics of literature.He thought that the literary creations should pay attention to manner,rhyme and layout,emphasized both knowledge accumulation and artistic inspiration,and preferred masculine style while maintain leisurely style.Compared with his previous works,a significant change can be found.The literary theory of ZengGuofan advocated both the Tongchengschool which had injected new vitality into the outdated Tongcheng school literature,and the Xiangxiang school which attached importance to the pragmatism.His literary theory played an important role in the history of literature.To accurate understand the change of his literary theory and grasp the value of his literary theory,one should not simply put it in the perspective of genre background,but should take the relationship between form and content as a starting point.Thus we can analysis how him find a balance between the body and mind by using literature to find the development rule of the literature when he,both a scholar and politician,faced national crisis and cultural difficulties.