Study On The Prose Of Wang Yun

Wang Yun was a representative litterateur and statesman in the north of the early Yuan Dynasty.Living in alternation of Jin Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty,the special historical background,he was faced with vicissitude of dynasty,moral restoration,cultural shock,academic transformation and other realistic issues.Wang Yun’s proses not only tell about his experience of being an official,but also carry forward his concept and plan for the social construction and development and convey his basic ideas and views about literary creation.This essay,which regards Wang Yun’s proses as the study object,comprises four parts:Wang Yun’s upbringing background,his practical thoughts,his prose theories and the artistic features of his works.Chapter one studies the cultural background of Wang Yun’s upbringing,his academic origin and his mentor-disciple relationship.First,Ji County,where Wang Yun lived,with its beautiful mountains and rivers and profound custom and culture accumulation,not only develops his passion for nature,addiction to ancient culture and the yearning for loyalty,righteousness,but also nurtures his peaceful and generous outlook on life.Second,though Wang Yun’s forefathers were born as peasants or bottom tier employees,they were not content with the status quo and they liked reading and learning which formed family culture:attaching great importance to reading,learning and Confucianism thus provided Wang Yun with favorable condition for him to widely read and accumulate knowledge.At last Wang Yun studied at Su Men and began to accept Neo-Confucianism when he was young,therefore changed his academic track.He learned from Wang Pan,Yao Shu,Yuan Haowen and other popular Confucian scholars,and was involved in poetic prose,calligraphy and practical thoughts to foster his accomplishment both in literature and Neo-Confucianism which holds significance of his literary concept and proses writing.Chapter two explores Wang Yun’s practical thoughts in his proses.As an outstanding statesman,he was actively engaged in affairs of states of the early Yuan Dynasty,and held many points of view toward and gave suggestions to legislation,scholars employment,officials’ election,moral codes and religion development.These express the efforts made by the scholar of northern Yuan Dynasty to the reconstruction of the early Yuan.The moral protecting consciousness of literati in the dilemma of Confucianism development was exemplified when he made it widely known of building temples,the sage thoughts,loyalty,filial piety,chastity and righteousness.His preservation and explanation of Taiyi School shows,to some extend,reflecting the combination of Taoism and Confucianism in the special historic background.Chapter three mainly analyzes Wang Yun’s prose theories.The theories are studied under the background of Neo-Confucianism and the northern academics in the early Yuan Dynasty,and they make it clear that,under the trend of literary and Taoism,Wang’s ontology thinking of proses are characterized "laying equal stress on literature and truth"and "the co-existence of Neo-Confucianism and Qi".Based on this,Wang Yun regards"self-attain" as the basic principle of prose creation,and requires writers to study the whole history of the classics as the foundation of learning,and to emphasize the clear truth and rhetoric to achieve the harmonious unity of the content,emotion and language and form.The nourishment of Neo-Confucianism has promoted Wang Yun’s pursuit of the plain,concealed and deliberate style of proses.He has also expressed his praise for grand-and-magnificent style out of the need to reinvigorate the Confucianism decay and inherit the traditional culture,which therefore shapes Wang Yun a more complete system of prose theory.Chapter four analyzes of the artistic features of Wang Yun’s proses,which makes a concrete interpretation of "Wang’s proses style of "powerful and elegant",and clarifies that his proses have many aesthetic qualities such as temperament and mellow elegance.Then chooses some representative style to carry out detailed analysis,and draws the theory that the proses use artistic methods of setting up the metaphor,destruction before construction,wording and question and answer,so on and so forth.His biographical proses not only write people by telling stories,prune appropriately,but also describe and synthesize at multiple angles.His miscellaneous essays,especially the travel-note ones,are skilled at depiction of sceneries,and they were unique in the time when people devoted full columns of essays to interpret the classics of morality,discuss and reason so they are themselves of fresh and energetic,natural and harmonious quality.