The Study About Xiaoshiwei And His Essays

Born in the late Ming Dynasty,Xiao Shiwei was ingenuous and knowledgeable,and made high achievements in his essays.Xiao Shiwei had quite a famous name in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.Tang Xianzu,Qian Qianyi and other literary masters all had high evaluation on him.However,his name and literary fame are now known to very few people,which doesn't match up to his achievements in essays.With this feeling,this thesis intends to comprehensively combine Xiao Shiwei's family,life,friendship,wring versions and creation of the essays through reading and arranging all the literary works of him,therefore expecting to restore the basic appearance of a writer with certain value in the late Ming literary world and strive to give him a relatively objective evaluation in literary history.This thesis has three chapters.The first chapter primarily introduces Xiao Shiwei's family history,life and friendship,and reveals the internal and external motivations of his creation of essays.The Xiao family is both a bureaucratic and scholarly family.The influence of family on Xiao Shiwei is firstly the development of a pure and straightforward character,secondly the cultivation of various interests and hobbies,and thirdly the establishment of a life ambition.Xiao Shiwei's life experience had been rough,and can be roughly divided into three stages: long studying period,entry into the official period,and retreat period.During these three stages,Xiao Shiwei's personal mentality has undergone great changes,and the content and style of his creation of essays has also undergone certain changes.Xiao Shiwei has a wide range of friends throughout his life,which has a great impact on his personal living conditions,creative mindset,creative ideas and creative content.The second chapter is the version research of Xiao Shiwei's writings.It mainly sorts out the deposits,collections,recorded contents,layout features and source conditions of“Chunfu Garden Collection”.“Chunfu Garden Collection” has certain differences between the current deposits,the library collections and the contents of major catalogues,which is worth studying.In terms of the recorded content,“ Chunfu Garden Collection” experienced two changes in the process of circulation: first,Xiao mengfang added some poems in the 14 th year of Qing Shunzhi period,and secondly,during the Qianlong period,the officials of“Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature” partially or completely destroyed some of the subsets of “ Chunfu Garden Collections”.The contents of the other versions all change around these three versions.The layout of “Chunfu Garden Collections” has not changed much in the various versions collected.The source flow of“Chunfu Garden Collections” is complicated.Considering some of the versions are missing,it is challenging to systematically sort out thesources and we can only make some reasonable inferences.The third chapter primarily studies the main content,artistic characteristics and literary status of Xiao Shiwei ' s essays.The main contents of Xiao Shiwei ' s essays include garden amuse,reading and self-cultivation,travelling and worrying about the country and the people.Xiao Shiwei ' s essays mainly present three artistic features: concise,natural and the combination of arts and popularity.The status of Xiao Shiwei's essays in the literary world experienced four stages: kind of well-known,very famous,decrease in fame and almost being forgotten.Considering the great achievements of Xiao shiwei in the essays,we should pay enough attention to him today.