The Literary Study Of The Warring States Period And The Family Book

Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu is one of the unearthed silk books which were found in Chang Sha's Mawangdui Han Tomb.The book's content is similar to Zhan Guo Ce,consisting of twenty-seven chapters,with more than 11,000 words.In addition to eleven chapters can be found in historical documents,the rest chapters of the book are totally unseen.This paper is based on the text of Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu to analyze the book's genres,characters,debate skills and language features respectively.The part of introduction briefly presents the reasons and significance of choosing this topic and related researches on this book home and abroad.The first chapter is a summary of Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu,which is divided into three parts.Firstly,discriminating the forming time of the book and its dividence.Secondly,verifying the relationships between Zhan Guo Ce and Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu.Mr. Tang Lan is on behalf of a group of scholars who believes that Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu is most probably to be Su Zi,which can not be seen from the Sui Danasty.The opponents argue that Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu may be an original book which Liu Xiang had refered to when compiling the book of Zhan Guo Ce.Due to Su Zi has been missing for a long period of time,the author of this paper holds reservations on the first view.Meanwhile,the second presentation is also inaccurate.The edition of Zhan Guo Ce isn't the one Liu Xiang compiled,and Zhan Guo Ce had once been scattered and modified,so we are not sure whether the sixteen missing chapters are in the missing part of Zhan Guo Ce or not.All in all,as for Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu and Zhan Guo Ce,we can only make references from each other,but it's really difficult for us to clarify the succession relations between them.Lastly,the text distinguishes the important role of Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu in the area of literary research.The book,as an unearthed historical document,makes a great contribution to the research of handed-down documents,whether in the aspects of textual or historical values.The second chapter of this paper is to discuss the genres in Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu.The genres in this book can be divided into epistolary genre, editorial genre and memorial genre.Wherein epistolary genre is consisted of eleven chapters,editorial genre thirteen chapters and memorial genre three chapters.For each genre,the paper analyzes from characteristics and functions respectively,and in close connection with the text.The third chapter focuses on the characters Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu has presented,especially the image of Su Qin.This chapter firstly discusses the background in which the political counselors arose,such as the areas of economy,politics,military,culture,society and so on.Then following the principles of from general to individual,the chapter introduces the political counselors appeared in this book.There are more than ten people appearing in Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu,but the relevant materials are limited.Except Su Qin,all of them have a short play,so this chapter put them together to discuss their common personalities,focusing on their patriotic loyalty to the emperor,eloquence and tacts.Su Qin,as the spokesman of “vertical”strategy,are presented fleshy and humane in this book,different from the rigid image in Zhan Guo Ce.The fourth chapter devides the debate skills of Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu into five categories,each of them is concluded from the lobbying speeches in the silk book.The fifth chapter tightly follows the fourth chapter,emphasizes on the language features of the political counselors.In the speech,they always use lots of rhetorics,such as metaphor,hyperbole,quotation,parallelism,rhetorical question,etc,which contributes to the persuasive effects of the speech.The whole language style of Zhan Guo Zong Heng Jia Shu is different from Zhan Guo Ce,exhibitting characteristics of rustic simplicity and euphemism.