The Development of China's Ancient Prose

The origin of China ancient prose can be traced back to Shang Dynasty, and many complete sentences have appeared in Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty. Bronze inscriptions in the Western Zhou Dynasty, some of which are as long as 300 to 500 words, record the deeds of nobles, the causes of lawsuits or rewards, etc. And the narrative content has been quite rich. These can be regarded as the embryonic form of ancient Chinese prose.

Pre-Qin prose is the beginning of China's prose. It is mainly preserved in Shangshu, Chunqiu, Zuozhuan, Guoyu and Warring States Policy. Including pre-Qin narrative prose such as Zuo Zhuan and Guoyu, and pre-Qin reasoning prose such as The Analects of Confucius and Zhuangzi.

In the pre-Qin period, the boundary between literature and non-literature was not clear. Prose at that time, compared with verse, was basically an exposition and narrative of philosophy, politics, ethics and history. However, due to its strong literariness, it had a great influence on the development of China literature and was regarded as an important part of pre-Qin literature.

Second, the Han dynasty

In the Han Dynasty, under the broad social background of feudal unification advocated by state power, prose continued to develop and made great achievements, occupying an important position in the history of China literature.

There are more kinds of prose in Han dynasty on the basis of previous lives. 30 prose styles such as ode, praise and wish. The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, which are involved in Liu Xie's stylistic theory, all appear independently, and each style is often subdivided into several subcategories with different styles and uses.

Three. Wei, Jin, southern and northern dynasties

The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties were a period of great division in the history of China. At the same time, when pluralistic politics and political power frequently overlap, the situation that thinkers respect each other no longer exists, but metaphysics and Buddhism prevail and Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism coexist. This period is another relatively active and open period in the history of China, and the development of prose also presents many new features.

Fourth, the Tang and Song Dynasties

Under the impetus of the ancient prose movement, prose writing became more and more complicated, and literary prose appeared, resulting in many excellent works such as landscape travel notes, fables, biographies and essays, and the famous "Eight Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties" also emerged at this time.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) Ming Dynasty

At first, the "Seven Sons" mainly imitated ancient times. Later, in the Tang and Song Dynasties, it was advocated that works "all flowed out from the chest", and Gui Youguang was famous.

Sixth, Qing Dynasty prose.

The prose of Qing Dynasty, represented by Tongcheng School, pays attention to the embodiment of "righteousness". Yao Nai, a representative writer of Tongcheng School, summed up the style of ancient Chinese prose and classified it into 13 categories, including argumentative essays, prefaces and postscripts, recitation, calligraphy, preface, imperial edict, biography, epitaph, miscellaneous words, ode, ci fu and mourning.

Extended data

Prose in the new period:

Prose creation in the new period mainly inherited documentary prose and classical prose in the liberated areas in the 1940s, which contributed to the upsurge of "communication" and "reporting" in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and the latter contributed to the upsurge of poetic prose creation in the 1960s.

In the first twenty-seven years, prose creation developed slowly and limited. No matter the creative method, artistic personality, variety style and genre, they are monotonous and even tend to be similar, patterned and formulaic.

In order to get rid of this framework and mode, a generation of prose writers returned to the May 4th tradition of prose creation, and enhanced their personality awareness, stylistic interest and stylistic awareness in their works, so that modern prose can be passed down from generation to generation.

Only in the new period of reform and opening-up, with the liberation of ideological individuality, the breaking of closed system and the expansion of artistic vision, mainland prose has experienced a real turning point after a long period of stagnation and stagnation, and prose creation has formed a craze. It is under the appeal of revitalizing prose creation that the prose style, which has always been regarded as an ultra-stable structure, has set off a wave of change on both sides of the Taiwan Strait since the 1980s.

In Chinese mainland, first, a group of old writers broke through the aesthetic norms of "simplicity" and "lyricism" in prose, and then a group of scholars, novelists and poets realized the theoretical proposition of "great prose" in the true sense, and restored the generosity and freedom of prose.

Mei Zhao, Huang Yiluan and other female writers, as well as Cao Minghua, Hu, Andrew West and other new generation essayists, have really brought earth-shaking changes to the traditional aesthetic concept of prose, which is of revolutionary significance in the innovative development of prose style.

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