Pre-Qin Prose in Classical Chinese Literature

The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period was an era of rapid social change, and during this period, pre-Qin prose occupied an important place in the history of Chinese literature. The cultural atmosphere of a hundred flowers blossoming and a hundred schools of thought contending for supremacy contributed to the prosperity of literature and ushered in a glorious era of culture, especially the doctrines of Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism, and the Law, which laid the foundation of traditional Chinese culture.

Pre-Qin prose can be divided into historical prose and the prose of the sons. As far as the general situation is concerned, historical prose is mainly narrative, and the prose of the sons is mainly reasoning. Historical prose includes the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Zuo Zhuan, the Strategies of the Warring States, and the State Language. The Spring and Autumn Annals is the earliest chronicle of the Warring States period compiled by Confucius. It recounts the major events of various countries during the 242 years from the year of the Duke Yin of Lu (722) to the fourteenth year of the Duke of Lamentations (480), and Confucius also made some comments on those events in accordance with his own point of view, and chose the words that he thought were appropriate to imply the meanings of praise and blame, which is what is often referred to as the "micro-aggressions". The Zuo Zhuan, following its example, follows the order of the 12 Lu monarchs, namely, Yin, Huan, Zhuang, Min, Xi, Wen, Xuan, Cheng, Xiang, Zhao, Ding and Lamentation, and the whole book is in 30 volumes, detailing the political, diplomatic and social events of each country in the Spring and Autumn Period, as well as the activities of some representative figures. From a literary point of view, it has high artistic achievements. It created a variety of sophisticated chapter structure and charming literary language, vividly depicted a series of characters, and was especially good at writing complex war events in a euphemistic tone. For example, the Battle of Long Spoon between Qi and Lu, the Battle of Cheng Pu between Jin and Chu, the Battle of Qin and Jin, and the Battle of Bi between Jin and Chu, all of which were tense and dramatic, have become models of narrative prose for later generations. The "Strategies of the Warring States", also known as the "Strategies of the State", is said to have been compiled by the historians or strategists of various countries during the Warring States period. During the Western Han Dynasty, it was organized by Liu Xiang into 33 articles. It mainly describes the political ideas and struggle strategies put forward by strategists and strategists when they lobbied or debated with each other. In between, there are biographies, stories, arguments, and letters, reflecting the sharp and complex political struggles among countries at that time, and it is another famous historical prose of the pre-Qin period following the Spring and Autumn Period and the Zuo Zhuan. In terms of artistic creation, compared with Zuo Zhuan, it has been developed again, often vividly depicting characters' words and deeds in complex political events, portraying many vivid characters and writing many stories with twists and turns in the plot. For example, "Feng Deceived Meng Chang Jun", "Jing Ke Entered Qin", "Touching the Empress Dowager Zhao", "Su Qin Begins to Lian Heng" and so on are all popular and famous articles. This book is especially important to the language art, a lot of use of hyperbole, metaphor. The book emphasizes the art of language, making extensive use of hyperbole, simile, analogy, and other artistic techniques, and mixing them with fables, presenting a distinctive feature of "Shizang Yangli" and "Dialectical and Unbridled". The 21-volume Guoyu*** is said to have been written by Zuo Qiu Ming. The book recounts a number of events in the history of various countries in a focused manner. The text is simple and easy to read, characterized by a long record of words, but also good at describing the demeanor of the characters.

Zhuzi prose can be divided into three periods: a period is the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the early years of the Warring States period, the main works, the Analects of Confucius is a discourse, the Laozi more rhyme, they are words about the meaning of abundance, the Mozi began to the organization of the tightly structured form of the discourse development. The second period is the middle of the Warring States period, the main works are "Mengzi", "Zhuangzi", their rhetoric than the previous period of rich, reasoning also smooth. The third period is the end of the Warring States period, the main works are Xunzi, Hanfeizi and so on. The representative essays of Zhu Zi's prose are strict in logic, in-depth analysis, and brilliant in rhetoric, and have reached a high level of achievement. Some of the texts in the prose of Zhu Zi are characterized by the expression of characters and the description of their behavior, which makes people read them as if they were seeing their faces and smiles. The Analects of Confucius and Mencius have more of these texts, and Mozi's Gongshu also belongs to this category. For example, the Analects of Confucius wrote about Confucius' disciple, Zilu, his blunt, reckless and fierce character; Yan Yuan wrote about his silence, good learning and poverty. There are also a lot of figurative sentences in the Analects, such as "The year is cold and then we know that pines and cypresses are sculpted afterward", "The three armies can take away the commander-in-chief, but the horsemen can't take away the will", etc. The second is the use of profound meaning. Secondly, the theory is clarified in the form of fables with profound meanings. Zhuangzi" is the most outstanding achievement in this regard. In Zhuangzi, there are the so-called "fables", "heavy words" and "goblet words". Zhuang Zhou thought that the world was "muddy" and could not speak "Zhuang language", so he used the "fables" and "re-tellings" which were "fallacious words, absurd words, and unprovoked cliff words". Therefore, he used "fables", "absurd words, unprovoked words" to express his thoughts. Fables include some mythological fantasies and fables; rewords are quotes from some historical stories and words of the ancients; goblet words are abstract theories. The artistic achievement of Zhuangzi lies first of all in the fact that it is rich in romanticism and strong poetry. For example, "The Journey to the Promenade" begins with "There is a fish in the northern underworld, and its name is Kun, and it is not known how many thousands of kilometers big it is. The roc's back is not known for thousands of miles." At the very beginning, it talks about the vastness of heaven and earth, and writes about the arbitrary change of the roc's traveling. It creates a very open mood. Artistically, many poets and prose writers of later times loved to learn the style and technique of Zhuangzi. Its richly imaginative fables and retellings have given later generations of literary scholars endless inspiration. Thirdly, it emphasizes on abstract analysis. At the same time, it is also rich in literary flavor, such as "Xunzi" and "Hanfeizi". Xunzi" in the "persuasion", "the theory of heaven", "sex and evil" good to reasoning, argumentative style, calm and thick; "Han Fei Zi" in the "five moths", "lonely indignation", "said difficult" are harsh and sharp style, reasoning fine and thorough. They all gave important influence to the later generations of prose.