The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were a dynamic and innovative period in the history of Chinese literary development. Poems, poems, novels and other genres all showed new characteristics of the times during this period, and laid the foundation for their subsequent development. direction.
From an ideological and cultural perspective, these "new changes" in the literature of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties are closely related to the spread of Buddhism in China. The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties periods in literary history began in the Jian'an period of the Eastern Han Dynasty and ended with the unification of the Sui Dynasty, lasting about four hundred years. The historical situation during this period was relatively complicated. The literature of the Southern and Northern Dynasties is an important subject in literary research as a whole. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the history of Chinese literature has been collected and published collectively by universities, colleges, scientific research institutions, and by individual experts, each with its own characteristics. Some of these works have had a great impact.
Starting from the Wei and Jin Dynasties, passing through the Southern and Northern Dynasties, including the early Tang Dynasty, it is the first period of the medieval period of Chinese literature. Looking at this period of literature, it is marked by the prosperity of ancient and modern poetry in five or seven characters. The Five Ancients reached its climax in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the Seven Ancients and Five-Seven-Yan Modern Style reached their peak in the early Tang Dynasty. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, literature underwent tremendous changes. The consciousness of literature and the personalization of literary creation were the most significant among these changes, and it was this that triggered a series of other changes and developments. During this period, the palace played a central role, and a literary group was formed around the palace. The convergence within the group causes literature to present a group style during this period of time, and another style at another period of time, thus making the stages of literary development quite obvious.
Modern Style Poetry
Liu Xie's Image
The emergence of Liu Xie's "Wen Xin Diao Long" marks the establishment of a complete system of Chinese literary theory and literary criticism. "Literary Mind and Diaolong" has 50 articles, including 5 general articles, 20 stylistic articles, 19 creative articles, and 5 critical articles. The last article, "Preface", is the preface to the whole book. Its content is extensive and profound, and its main contributions are in the following two aspects: First, it discusses the external causes and internal laws of literary development. The creation theory in "The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons" is the essence of the whole book. There are many incisive summaries in the book, such as "mental thoughts", "physical nature", "character", "set style", "emotion", "hidden" Show", etc., involves many important issues such as image thinking, artistic imagination, artistic style, artistic conception, etc., and has high theoretical value.
There are two systems of ancient Chinese novels, namely the classical Chinese novel system and the vernacular novel system. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, there were only classical Chinese novels. The novels at this time can be collectively called notebook novels, which are written in classical Chinese and are short in length. They describe strange stories circulated in society, anecdotes about characters, or fragments of them. The narrative of the storyline and the description of the characters have begun to take shape. The number of works is also considerable. But as far as the author's subjective intention is concerned, it is just written as a real thing and lacks artistic fiction.
Paintings of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties
After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, poetics got rid of the shackles of Confucian classics, and the direction of the entire literary trend was to break away from the need for political enlightenment emphasized by Confucianism and find the independence of literature itself The meaning of existence. At this time, some brand-new concepts and theories were put forward, such as character, charm, image, as well as the relationship between words and meaning, form and spirit, etc., and an aesthetic thought that emphasized image, character, and charm was formed. Poetry seeks subtext, music seeks subtext, and painting seeks extravagant interest. This conscious aesthetic pursuit of communication between various literary and artistic forms marks the arrival of a new literary era.