Research On Chen Yun

Chen Yun,with style name “Yunxian” and pseudonym “Shuyi”,was self-proclaimed as “Dao Shan Nv Zi”.She was born in 1885 at Houguan(known as a part of Fuzhou today),Province Fujian,and was dead in 1911.She had two poetry anthologies entitled Chen Xiao Nv Yi Ji and Xiao Dai Xuan Verse of Poetry.Chen Yun spent her whole life travelling here and there with her mother Xue Shaohui,taking care of her mother and brother without marriage.Her literary creations,literary criticism and ideology of feminine education were all influenced by her mother deeply while reserving her own characteristic.In the aspect of substance,most works in Chen Xiao Nv Yi Ji are extolling women’s virtues like chastity and filial piety,as much as accounts of affection between family members and association with relatives and friends,or worry about the west influenced Chinese tradition too much.In the aspect of theme,there are a lot of works about travelling or history,myth and religion also exists.One motivation for writing Xiao Dai Xuan Verse of Poetry was to please her mother,while the other was to make a catalogue for her mother’s work Nv Wen Yuan Lie Zhuan,therefore its origin can be traced to her mother’s translation Wai Guo Lie Nv Zhuan and the poetry collection titled Guo Chao Gui Xiu Zheng Shi Ji which edited by Yun Zhu,while its stylistic rules and layout can be obtained by comparing them with Wang Shizhen’s poems on poetry and Guo Chao Gui Xiu Zheng Shi Ji.Chen Yun’s ideology of women’s education and viewpoint of female talent and virtuousness were based on feminist perspective,combined Chinese traditional feminine education with early modern feminine education viewpoint,reference andtestify each other,making efforts to preserve traditional feminine education and structure balance between early modern feminine education and the validity of women’s traditional literary creations.Her poetic view was closely related with “poetic education” of “gentleness and sincerity” and the agitation of studying abroad at early modern time,which was able to be seen in her practice of writing and the artistic style of her works.Last but not least,the image of Chen Yun structured by different biographical texts presents typical characteristic of traditional ladies who were in the time of the transition from the old to the new,while emerging profile male authors’ self-examination and self narration through women’s biography.