The Study On Chen Mingzheng's Narrative Prose

The narrative prose is one important type in ancient style,including all texts recording men,events and things.The development of the narrative prose has experienced a long period of history.In Wei-jin Period,the narrative prose was regarded as the beginning of the genre and the Peach-Blossom Spring is a single article named after “Ji”,which played a pioneering role in the development of theJi Prose in later generations.In Tang Dynasty,Liu Zongyuan made great achievements because of the number of thirty-five narrative prose.In Song Dynasty,the narrative prose was booming and Wen Yuan Ying Hua written by Li Fang and others initially listed “Ji” as a separate literary form in books.In Ming and Qing Dynasty,the narrative prose showed the trend of diversified development.And during the reign of Chenghua and Hongzhi,with the revolution of social thoughts,there emerged a great number of writers who had the courage to break through the set pattern and then hit the reality one of whom was Chen Minzheng.Chen Minzheng,an officer and scholar during the reign of Chenghua and Hongzhi in Ming Dynasty,wrote a collection of poetry—Huangpeng Collection,including ninety-three volumes one of which picked up one volume,which covered nearly thirty-three types of genre.The content was mainly written as argumentation prose,sequence prose,inscriptions and narrative prose.Li Dongyang contended that he was the only one who was magnificent,self-contained and the quality of the contemporary.As for the area,Chen's Ji Prose was mainly about the capital and his hometown.There were one hundred and forty-two articles in Chen's Ji Prose,mainly divided into three categories—Taige of Interest,travel notes and notes of calligraphy and painting.And Taige of interest had more than one hundred articles,accounting for over 80 percent,whose abundant contents included articles about ancestral temples,pavilion halls,Taoist temples,academies,bridges,pavilions,and buildings and so on.There were eight articles of travel notes.Although the number of this category was small,literary achievement was the greatest.In those articles,there were some famous articles,such as Night Crossing Two Prisons,Creek Hill Music and Touring Jiulong Pool.There were seven articles on notes of calligraphy and painting,mainly based on poem and essays and works of painting,covering inscriptions,and men and events.Not only was the content of Chen's Ji prose abundant,but the thoughts and artistic attainments presented various features.He was a writer during the melting period of Neo-Confucianism and Heart-mind theory and he also put forward the idea that Zhu's and Lu's thought had different beginning but had the same ending.Based on the above two aspects,the thoughts of Chen's Ji prose combined the characteristics of Neo-Confucianism with the features of Heart-mind theory.As for artistic attainments,it was just as the ancients said the style is the man.His prose presented the following features: being good at argumentation and reasoning,natural style and simple sentences,and subjectivity and objectivity integrated.Chen Minzhen lived at the transitional stage of literature from Taige Ti to Chaling School in Ming Dynasty.The special historical period with mind-melting helped to create a sophisticated scholar whose works covered various writing styles.The special period played an important role in promoting the narrative prose at thattime.Firstly,the perspective of writing transformed from praising national prosperity to describing daily lives and as for the relationship between humans and nature,literature began to be open to nature.Secondly,it also made great contribution to promoting literary naturalization and pursuing insipid lyric.It is not difficult to findthat Chen's articles had outstanding performance in and made great contribution to the description of daily lives and expression natural thought.Finally,a variety of literature trends were interwoven during the reign of Chenghong.Some just began,some just went through recession and others reached the peak.A large number ofscholars played an inspiring and promoting role in that the antiquarian trend of literature began to dominated the world of literary at that time.Chen Minzheng was one of those scholars.But Chen Minzheng,a writer having knowledge and talents,did not create any classic works in narrative prose,which really calls for deep thought.The author attributes the phenomenon not only to objective timeChen's personal factors.during early years of the Ming Dynasty,Zhu Yuanzhang imposed strict control on the ideological field and made Chenzhu Neo-Confucianism become official dominate thought,which produced a great deal of restriction on scholars' creation.Even though they had strong desire for unstressed and free lives,it was hard to break severe constriction of traditional thoughts.HoweveZongyuan,Ou Yangxiu,Fan Zhongyan,those works,such as Yongzhou Baji,Zuiweng Tingji,Yuanyanglouji,were created when they were banished from the court and the creation of the works was closely linked to personal fates and writers' feeling of fate.Such opportunity was not the thing you thing could happen to you.When ChenMinzheng went back home because of officialdom dispute or filial mourning,he spent most of his time in organizing and conserving local literature and compiling poetry,which was distinguished from scholars in former generations.