What are the national characteristics of China's ancient literary theory?

The Chinese nation has its own cultural tradition and distinctive personality in reflecting the cultural development of all ethnic groups in the world. Affected by this, China's ancient philosophy, history, literature and other humanities fields also showed the cultural characteristics of the Chinese nation. However, in the process of modernization of China's ancient literature research system, it shows an increasingly obvious westernization tendency. Since the May 4th Movement, our literary theory system has been westernized gradually, the modern and contemporary literary criticism system has been westernized, and the ancient literary criticism system has also been westernized unconsciously. On the surface, the expression language in ancient literature research works still has a certain traditional color, but the basic theoretical terms are all western. These western theories are helpful for us to understand China literature in the world, but fundamentally, it is impossible to explain the phenomenon of ancient China literature. On the contrary, people's understanding of the laws of China's ancient literature has become increasingly vague, deviating from historical facts and national traditions and losing national characteristics. How to adhere to the China cultural tradition in the study of ancient literature in China in the new century? This should be an important task before us. To change the current research mode of ancient literature, we need not only full theoretical exploration, but also serious research and practice in combination with the characteristics of China literature. Recently, I was lucky enough to read Professor Yang Shuzeng's History of China History and Literature, which gave me great inspiration. I want to talk about my own views on this topic. In the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation, history and literature have always been inextricably linked. No matter what form of literature, it is always a product under certain historical conditions. Speaking of China literature with a long history, we are always used to dividing it by dynasties or times, such as pre-Qin literature, Han literature, Tang and Song literature, modern literature and so on. China people have long recognized the relationship between the development of literature and the changes of the times. Liu Xie put it well in Wen Xin Diao Long Times Series: "Times change, quality and literature change", from "The Past in Tang Tao" to "The Emperor's Adventure", "Wei Ying has ten generations, and its words have changed nine times", so "every generation has a generation of literature", but it is far from simple to talk about the relationship between China literature and history. The emergence and development of literature is not only subject to historical changes, but its content and form are sometimes indistinguishable from historiography, which is also history and history. In ancient China, that is, the pre-Qin period, China's early historical works, such as Chunqiu and Zuozhuan, were also called "historical prose" or "historical biography literature". On the other hand, literary works such as The Book of Songs are also regarded as the most precious and reliable ancient historical documents by historical researchers, and some of them are directly called "epic" by later generations, meaning "all six classics are history" and "all six classics are literature". After the Han Dynasty, although the relationship between China's orthodox historiography and literature became more and more distant with the academic differentiation, the phenomenon of using literature to explain history or taking history as the literary theme did not disappear. The tradition of miscellaneous biography began with Mu Zhuan and Yan Zi Chun Qiu in the pre-Qin period, and became a great landscape after the Han Dynasty. A series of works such as Yue Jue Shu by Yuan Kang and Wu Ping, Wu Yue Chun Qiu by Zhao Ye, The Story of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty by Liu Xiang and Biography of Lienv appeared. Thus came the anecdote novels in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there were legends of historical figures; There were storytelling books in the Song Dynasty. There were historical dramas in Yuan Dynasty; There are historical romance novels in Ming dynasty; Historical rap in Qing dynasty; Modern and contemporary historical memoirs and film and television dramas with historical themes. They are historical in content and literary in form. Literature and history are inseparable, which is undoubtedly an important cultural phenomenon in China. Regrettably, although we have been involved in the study of dating literature history and split literature history for many years, some of which are also important objects of traditional literature research, we have not recognized them as unique cultural phenomena in China, and naturally no one has revealed their artistic characteristics and made a detailed investigation of their occurrence and development. This is a defect in fully understanding China's literary tradition. Professor Yang Shuzeng, with his keen academic vision, saw the importance of this literary phenomenon and took the lead in systematically studying it. He called this type of literature "historical literature", defined its characteristics scientifically for the first time, described its history of occurrence and development with thick lines, and wrote China's first history of historical literature (pre-Qin and Han Dynasties), which is undoubtedly a groundbreaking work. China History and Literature is a perfect combination of China's history and literature. It is not only a history written with literary brushwork, but also a literary work with historical events and historical figures as its theme. It reached a considerable height in the pre-Qin period, which reflected the cultural characteristics of the Chinese nation: as China gradually entered the "rational society" since Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the original rich myths and legends of China were prematurely forgotten; The development of historiographer culture has made China people form a tradition of attaching importance to history very early. This made China in the pre-Qin period not produce an epic as long as that of ancient Greece, but produced historical works that the Greeks could not reach. If the appearance of ancient Greek myths and epics provided a "rich soil and arsenal" for western literature, thus laying the cultural tradition of western literature, then in China, it is precisely because of the development of historians' culture that the historical literature in the pre-Qin period became an important cultural source of China's later novels and operas, and even made it a "rich soil and arsenal" for China's later literary styles such as poetry and singing. I think it is very important for Professor Yang Shuzeng to study China literature from this angle. He not only defined the nature of China's historical literature and wrote the first groundbreaking history of China's historical literature, but also revealed the unique process and development law of China's literature from a new angle, which is conducive to better understanding the content form and distinctive national characteristics of China's literature from the scope of world culture and establishing the unique position of China's literature in world literature. As we know, the history of China literature, as a new discipline, developed under the influence of the history of western literature. Therefore, our understanding of the laws of China's literary history was unconsciously influenced by western cultural centralism, which made us used to evaluating and measuring the development of China's literary history according to the development track of western literary history for a long time. For example, regarding epics, many scholars once took ancient Greek epics as the standard, and came to the conclusion that there was no epic in ancient China, which was even regarded as a sign of the underdevelopment of ancient China literature. This assertion is naturally wrong and has aroused strong opposition from some scholars. They believe that the poems in The Book of Songs, such as Sheng Min, Gongliu, Xuanniao and Long Hair, are ancient epics of China. Although they are not as long as ancient Greek epics, they have all the elements of epics. This explanation is naturally reasonable. Needless to say, epics like Sheng Min and Gong Liu can't be compared with Homer's epic in scale and content. If compared, it can't be said that China's ancient epic is as great as that of ancient Greece at the same time. However, it is unfair to judge whether China's ancient literature is developed by this standard. Because in this comparison, people are still unconsciously subject to the evaluation system of western literature, and there is still no prejudice against the centralism of western literature. Professor Yang Shuzeng's research is completely based on the reality of China's cultural tradition. He explained with sufficient facts that China literature grew up in a completely different environment from western cultural traditions and had a unique way of occurrence and development. This is just as Professor Yang Shuzeng said: China's ancient mythological epic is underdeveloped. "This is not so much a' short board' of our national culture as a feature of our national culture. China literature has its own unique development path. China never developed a prosperous mythological literature, nor did it produce a large-scale narrative poem during Homer's epic period, but China found a new form of expression at that time, and its ability to comprehensively and meticulously reflect historical changes even surpassed Homer's epic. " Therefore, we don't have to feel inferior because China didn't produce a long epic like ancient Greece, but we should be proud that China has such a long history and literary tradition. This is of great significance to the world's comprehensive and correct understanding of China's historical and literary characteristics. Professor Yang Shuzeng's History of China History and Literature inspired me not only in history and literature, but also in other aspects of China literature. The concept of "historical literature" is meaningful, because it conforms to our national literary tradition and is summed up in the practice of national literary tradition. Focusing on the background of national culture, he started with the early exploration of China's cultural characteristics, combed the clues from the network connection between literature and history and other ideologies, and grasped its development vein from the complicated cultural phenomena in China. Professor Yang Shuzeng pointed out: "The internal context of the development of China's historical literature is the formation and evolution of China's historical literature characteristics. Only by grasping this point can we make clear a clear track of the development of China's historical literature itself, which should conform to the internal development logic of China's historical literature. When we look at the formation and evolution of China's historical and literary characteristics in the social and historical process of China, we will find that the formation of China's historical and literary characteristics is not only related to the development of society, but also related to the evolution of China's literary style. " With such theoretical guidance and historical framework, Professor Yang Shuzeng naturally collected some works that were difficult to be involved in previous literary studies, or were difficult to be incorporated into the traditional literary system and could not be deeply studied, such as Shan Hai Jing, Mu Chuan, Yan Zi Chun Qiu, Yan Danzi and so on. , become a complete category of China history and literature, and establish an accurate position for them in the history of literature, and draw some unprecedented conclusions. By extension, we can not only reveal the development law of "historical literature" with China cultural characteristics, but also reveal the uniqueness and development law of other literary styles in China, such as poems, novels, operas and essays. Looking back, the study of China literature in the past century has lost its nationality to some extent. One of the important reasons is that we didn't study China literature from the practice, but standardized China ancient literature with a set of literary concepts introduced from the west. It turns out that in ancient China, "literature" was a relatively broad concept, including not only literature in a narrow sense in the sense of modern disciplines, such as poetry, drama and novels. But it also includes strategies, chapters, tables, secretaries and other forms of non-literary style. The concept of China's ancient literature, in Zhang Taiyan's words, is: "A writer is called Wen because he has words written on bamboo and silk; On its French style, it is called literature. " This statement has been severely criticized since the May 4th Movement, because it lacks modern scientific nature and is inconsistent with western literary concepts. On the positive side, the new concept of literature since the May 4th Movement has formally incorporated the operas and novels that were not elegant in the past into the literary palace, making poetry, prose, operas and novels four main literary forms, thus excluding things that do not belong to literature today, such as chapters and tables, secretaries and even words and exegesis. On the negative side, however, the concept of new literature was not summed up on the basis of fully respecting the development facts of China's ancient literature, but was derived from western theories and contemporary people's understanding of literature, and then applied to China's ancient literature stiffly. In this way, we can't help but feel limited in summarizing China's ancient literature. Using this literary concept to summarize China's ancient literature is not in line with the reality of the development of China's ancient literature, so it can't completely describe and explain the phenomenon of China's ancient literature, nor can it well summarize the development law of China's ancient literature. This watch has two aspects. First, to discuss China's ancient literature with today's literary concept, it is bound to cut off a large part of the content that does not belong to today's literature. For example, in China's ancient literary concept, "Wen" is a rather broad concept, which includes not only the literary prose mentioned today, but also other political applications and other article styles. However, in our literary history today, the proportion of "prose" is quite small. Without a comprehensive description of prose, an important content of ancient literature, is a history of ancient Chinese literature still complete? Secondly, it is precisely because we use today's western literary concepts to standardize ancient literature that it has seriously affected our understanding of China's ancient literature content and its development law. An obvious example is that in the current literary history, we all study poetry as the most typical literary style. However, as we all know, we have a unique understanding of poetry since the era of The Book of Songs. In the eyes of the ancients, poetry not only undertakes the function of lyrical entertainment, but also undertakes the function of enlightenment. In ancient China, writing poetry was never a pure artistic activity, but a cultural activity with complex significance. To be a good poet, the first condition is not how many artistic writing skills he has mastered, but to what extent he has cultivated himself and whether he has the skills of "original way", "gathering saints" and "studying classics" The reason why the ancients called "Poetry 300" "Jing" is because they saw the various cultural functions contained in it. Since the May 4th Movement, people no longer regard Bai Shisan as a classic, but just study it as an ordinary literary work, euphemistically calling it "restoring the original features of The Book of Songs". Now we should think carefully whether this is "restoring" or "destroying" the true colors of The Book of Songs. I think that if we don't understand the Book of Songs from the unique perspective of China culture, we won't understand it correctly, we won't understand the two most important concepts in China's poetry tradition, namely "elegance" and "Bi Xing", and we won't make a reasonable explanation for the cultural spirit and historical development of China's poetry. Therefore, paying full attention to the cultural traditions in China literature is an important prerequisite for us to study China literature realistically.