The Research On Ancient-Style Prose Theory And Criticism Of Fang Zongcheng

As an important part of Chinese literary criticism,ancient literary theory and ancient literary criticism have unique discourse systems and distinctive national characteristics,which makes them become important research fields.Tongcheng school which is the"literary hegemon" of the Qing Dynasty has made great achievements in the aforementioned two fields.Fang Zongcheng,one of the representative writers in the later period of Tongcheng School,expended the line of previous achievements of Tongcheng,but also played an important role in promoting the development of Tongcheng literature and expanding the influence of Tongcheng literature.This paper is divided into seven parts to study ancient-style Chinese prose theory and criticism of Fang Zongcheng respectively.The first chapter discusses the quartering of Fang's life stage according to the literature review and introduces his works briefly.The second chapter discusses Fang Zongcheng's literary creative idea which is known as "the unity of literature and human nature".He emphasized the importance of human nature and the way of writing that can show Tao characteristics.He argued that researches which can successfully unify literature and human nature are the really insightful researches.This thinking indicates that he did not only inherit Tongcheng's predecessors'theory,but also did a great number of practical studies.Fang's criticism about the writings of the eight schools reflects his literary ideas.The third chapter discusses his pursuit of Righteousness(Li Zheng Qi Sheng)and Masculine(Yang Gang)style of writing.He emphasized the importance of human nature and insisted that the research itself must be perfect.He pointed out the shortcomings of Tongcheng's literary spirit,and advocated that Chinese literature must follow a Masculine style.This aesthetic orientation in his literature is based on the previous researcher's outstanding contribution and is closely associated to the social environment.Fang's advocates of the Righteousness writing style shows that he was an adorer of Mencius's literature.He argued that the Righteousness writing style in Mencius's literature is derived from the principle of "writing article based on the subject,being aware of the subject based on the writing style",which is the important content of ancient literary criticism.The following three chapters introduce his thoughts of unifying literature and human nature by using a case study of Fang's comments on the book of the grammar of the Chunqiu and Zuozhuan.The fourth chapter discusses the unique point of view in his comments.Fang's idea of "writing article based on article category" aims to show the writing norms of various styles so that students can grasp the stylistic features in the creation of ancient Chinese prose which help the writers show their inner morality.The fifth chapter mainly introduces the excellent parts in his comments on Zuozhuan.He commented on the contents in Zuozhuan which follows the principle of "writing article based on the subject,being aware of the subject based on the writing style".The sixth chapter introduces the complex writing style in his comments.He thought that while the writer of Zuozhuan created a magnificent literary environment through complex writing style,he also implicitly incorporated his own ethics.The seventh chapter discusses the value and status of his ancient-style prose theory and ancient-style prose criticism.On the one hand,I analyze his study and development of Tongcheng's literary theory.Fang mainly incorporated human nature into the theory of ancient literary creation and advocate Masculine writing style based on Fangbao's"Yifa"and Yao Nai's "Yinyang Gangrou",which help Chinese writers write articles that are beneficial to Tongcheng school and arouse scholars to maintain the rule of the Qing Dynasty.On the other hand,I evaluate the value and analyzes the status of his ancient literary theory and criticism in the history of Chinese literature.Although he did not reach the achievements of Zeng Guofan and Wu Rulun that were acknowledged by Chinese scholars,his work on making comments on Tongcheng more specifically,expanding the influence of Tongcheng writing style and promoting the development of Tongcheng school should not be neglected.