Exploring Its Source and Pass Its Flow,Raising Its Program and Expand Its Purpose——Mu Zhai's Writing Method of Tang Qian Wen Xue Yuan Liu Shi
Mu Zhai's masterpiece almost upended the concept and writing style of"systematic completeness"in literary histo-ry,unlike previous literary history works that linked many knowledge points together with a historical thread and feared missing any-thing,but instead targeted the crucial parts of"source"and"flow".Exploring the source to understand the flow,raising the frame-work to expand the details.The most striking thing is the author's destruction and subversion of traditional academic stereotypes.Like previous literary history works,they often placed myths at the beginning to regard them as the source of Chinese literature.Mu Zhai,however,excluded myths from the literary history system and believed that Chinese literature originated from myths,which was a"collective misconception"of an era.Previous literary history works had a misunderstanding about the genesis of literary styles,thinking that poetry came before prose,so they placed the earliest poetry or the Book of Songs before the rise of prose.Mu Zhai,however,believed that poetic elements emerged from the repeated recording and writing of the Oracle Bone Script,so prose came before poetry.Previous literary history works had classified the Wu Yan Yue Fu poetry such as"Mo Shang Shang""Shang Shan Cai Mi Wu""Kong Que Dong Nan Fei"and"Gu Shi Shi Jiu Shou"as belonging to Han Dynasty literature.Mu Zhai,however,attributed all of them to Cao Zhi and Zhenhou's names.He believed that some of the poems were related to the love story between Cao Zhi and Zhenhou,and even believed that the"Farewell Poetry"attributed to Su Wu and Li Ling was also related to Cao Zhi and Zhenhou.He dedicated a chapter to"Cao Zhi Wu Yan Shi Xie Zuo Yuan Liu Shi".In this chapter,the author used numerous means and methods such as historical research,background investigation,textual search,word-by-word analysis,logical deduction,etc.to conduct in-depth research and analysis,ultimately reaching a groundbreaking conclusion.
Mu Zhaihistory of Chinese literaturewriting method
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