A Study On The Fusion Of Confucianism And Taoism In Jian ’an Literature

Jian ’an Period is a special stage of Chinese ideological and cultural development.Since the late Eastern Han Dynasty,Confucian classics began to become rigid and declining.At this time,it lost its absolute control over the thoughts of scholars.Some Confucian scholars took the complementary Taoist thought as the ideological resource to remedy the defect and introduced Confucianism.Confucianism and Taoism began to merge and metaphysics sprouted.This change influenced the development of literature and was expressed in literary works.On the one hand,Jian ’an scholars took literature as a means to express their feelings,boldly expressed their personal experiences and feelings,and recognized their own value in the natural landscape.On the other hand,the rational understanding of life and death,the rethinking of individual life value and social and historical responsibility,the pursuit of thinking about the sky and the world and so on,are the expression of the integration of Confucianism and Taoism.This paper is divided into five chapters to discuss this problem.In the first chapter the emergence of the fusion tendency of Confucianism and Taoism wil be examined firstly,which appeared in the middle and late Eastrn Han Dynasty.And Taoism and finds that this tendency appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.Firstly,with blending Daoism into Confucianism,Wang Ch’ung and Wang Fu who led the trend of social criticism,criticized and corrected and criticized and corrected the divination of prophecy mixed with Confucian classics by virtue of the spirit of "the Dao of Heaven does not anythig forcibly" of Taoist thought.At the same time,Ma Rong,Gao Guan,Zheng Xuan and other folk classics masters introduced the thought of Lao Zhuang into their interpretation and annotation of the classics,expanding the influence of the integration of Confucianism and Taoism.Politically,the successive occurrence of disasters of relatives,eunuchs and partisan occlusion made the purview of the life of the scholars turn more and more to the Taoist Daysheng capriciousness and to entertainment.This was the early stage of the fusion of Confucianism and Taoism.The second chapter summarizes the influence of Confucianism and Taoism on the thought of scholars in Jian ’an period.After the Yellow Turban Uprising,China was plunged into hundreds of years of division and turmoil,and the integration of Confucianism and Taoism entered a new stage.The awakening of the scholar class is transforming from group consciousness to individual consciousness,and the Jian An Shi style is characterized by simplicity.Kong Rong,Zhong Changtong,Xu Qian and Cao Zhi are the typical representatives of scholars period,who were influenced by the integration of Confucianism and Taoism.Most of them are Confucian scholars who have received orthodox Confucian education,but still stand on the Confucian standpoint and hope to restore the proper social order.At the same time,they were also influenced by Taoist thought,and with the help of Taoist thought,they re-thought and discussed some unreasonable parts of Confucianism.The third chapter analyzes the fusion of Confucianism and Taoism in Jian ’an literature.On the one hand,Confucianism is still the spiritual core and ideological foundation of literati,which retains the spirit of enterprising and vigorous character for Jian ’an literature.On the other hand,the intervention of Taoism makes Jian ’an literature move towards the conscious direction of "literati’s writing",which aims at describing personal life and expressing true feelings.It can be found that the integration of Confucianism and Taoism is reflected in the following aspects: First,Jian ’an literature adopts the life theme creation,adopts the rational understanding of life and death of Confucianism and Taoism,and adheres to the natural life view.Secondly,from the perspectives of Confucianism and Taoism,Jian ’an literature dispels and surpasses the anxiety brought by the cognition of the impermanence of life.Finally,the pursuit of life value expressed in Jian ’an literature unifies Confucianism’s emphasis on social and historical responsibility with Taoism’s emphasis on individual existence value,and finally points to individual achievements.The fourth chapter focuses on the fusion of Confucianism and Taoism in Jian ’an’s literary theory.In the late Han Dynasty,there appeared a tendency to merge Confucianism and Taoism in the true beauty of Wang Chong and Wang Fu,and in the literary essence view of Jian ’an Ruan Yu and Ying.During the Jian ’an Period,the upsurge of character appraisal and the trend of social literature and art emerged,which eventually gave birth to the emergence of "Essays on Classic Theories".The discussion of literary style theory and literary values reflects the integration of Confucianism and Taoism.The fifth chapter analyzes and summarizes the influence of the integration of Confucianism and Taoism in Jian ’an literature on later literature.The core ideological content and literary spirit of Jian ’an literature benefit from the integration of Confucianism and Taoism to a large extent.Therefore,it can be said that the influence of Jian ’an literature on later literature is also closely related to the integration of Confucianism and Taoism.First of all,it affects Ruan Ji and Ji Kang,the representatives of Zhengshi literature,Whose works embody the wordly and out-worldly feelings.Secondly,it influenced the formation of landscape and pastoral literature in the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties.Finally,the spirit of Jian ’an literature was refined into Jian’an strength of character,which was inherited by the poetry circle of the early Tang Dynasty.Through the sublimation of the vigorous poetic style of the prosperous Tang Dynasty,it became the influential aesthetic spirit of Chinese classical poetry,which had a lasting influence on the literature of later generations.