Essentials of Medieval Chinese Literary Theory: Ten Lectures

Author: Wang Yunxi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This book consists of ten lectures, divided into five thematic sections, with closely related content, with the central focus being on discussing the artistic characteristics, advantages, disadvantages, and gains of the highly flourishing parallel prose literature during the medieval period. , the second lecture points out that contemporary scholars believed the most important artistic characteristic of works was the linguistic beauty of parallel prose literature; the third and fourth lectures discuss how parallel prose and poetry dominated the literary scene from the Wei and Jin periods to the Five Dynasties and were highly valued by critics; the fifth and sixth lectures analyze literary (wencai) referring to the linguistic beauty of parallel prose literature, where excessive literary charm leads to weakness and softness, hence the need for a balance with simplicity; the seventh and eighth lectures analyze Fenggu (wind-bone) referring to the simple style of writing, advocating for a combination of Fenggu and literary charm, which is a concrete embodiment of the principle of "harmonious balance between substance and form"; the ninth and tenth lectures discuss the style and appearance (tìmào) as a major topic in medieval literary theory, holding significant positions in both Liu Xie's The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons and Zhong Rong's Poetic Criticism, where style, appearance, and style are essentially determined by the primary condition of linguistic application.