The Influence of China's Traditional Confucianism and Taoism on China Ancient Literature

Confucianism and Taoism are the two pillars of China's traditional thought. Confucianism is characterized by "hard work", while Taoism is characterized by natural detachment. In the development of ancient literature in China, Confucianism and Taoism have exerted a profound influence on literati's personality, literary creation and literary theory in different ways, which are mutually exclusive and complementary.

First, the psychological structure of literati Confucianism and Taoism are the two pillars of China's traditional thought. For the literati who grew up under the influence of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and Zhuangzi, they always have to face two attitudes towards life: official career and retirement, assistance and independence, optimism and enterprising and passive retreat. Generally speaking, Confucianism advocates actively joining the WTO and taking saving the world as its own responsibility; Taoism, on the other hand, advocates being different and taking freedom and self-adaptation as its ideal.

The two are both opposite and complementary. But what needs to be explained here is that in fact, both Confucianism and Taoism have two mentalities: actively using the world and being detached from things.