Overall evaluation In the first half of this century, there were not many articles and monographs on overall research and overall evaluation of Liu Zongyuan's prose, and only a few articles on Liu Zongyuan's prose focused on his landscape travel notes or devoted to his novels and literature.
In 1950s and 1960s, academic circles began to appear some articles that analyzed and evaluated Liu Zongyuan's prose achievements as a whole, such as Huang's evaluation of Liu Zongyuan's literature, Sister Liu's Liu Zongyuan and His Prose, Liu Zongyuan's Prose and Tang Gen's On Liu Zongyuan's Prose Thoughts. Most of these articles affirmed Liu Zongyuan's position and role in the ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty and the history of China's prose from both ideological and artistic aspects. Among them, Huang emphasized Liu Zongyuan's militancy and exposure to reality in his prose works, and thought that although Liu Zongyuan played a leading role in the ancient prose movement in the Tang Dynasty, his role was not as good as Han Yu's. Similarly, Sister Liu and Zhou paid more attention to the realism of Liu Zongyuan's prose, but they did not discuss the artistry of Liu Zongyuan's prose enough.
In addition, The History of China Literature edited by You Guoen and The History of China Literature edited by the Institute of Literature of China Academy of Sciences also affirmed the achievements and historical position of Liu Zongyuan's prose. For example, the former thinks that Liu Zongyuan "developed the ancient prose movement from the creative practice", while the latter also thinks that "Liu Zongyuan's literary achievements in prose are" higher than Han Yu's ".
After the 1980s, although academic circles paid more attention to the study of various themes of Liu Zongyuan's prose, there were still some articles on the art and achievements of Liu Zongyuan's prose. Compared with similar articles in 1950s and 1960s, these papers pay more attention to the artistic techniques and artistic realm of Liu Zongyuan's prose. For example, comment on Liu Zongyuan's prose, Sun Changwu on Liu Zongyuan's prose art, Ma on Liu Zongyuan's contribution to the ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty, Sun on the evolution of Liu Wen's style and its reasons, Wu Lili on Liu Wen's tragic beauty, and Wu Xiaolin on Liu Zongyuan's prose beauty.
Among them, Sun Changwu analyzed Liu Zongyuan's prose art in detail from the following aspects: "My prose is suitable for narration", "Everything is washed and caged", "Feeling angry and sad" ... in the form of words ","I am not abandoned by saints ","I am curious about writing "and" I will stop when I feel exhausted ". Ma discussed Liu Zongyuan's contribution to the ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty from two aspects: theory and creation. He believes that the contribution of ancient prose writers is mainly to "push the so-called miscellaneous notes, prefaces and modern so-called essays to a peak". Among them, Han and Liu have their own achievements and strengths, and Liu Zongyuan's achievements in this respect are particularly good. Wu Xiaolin thinks that the overall artistic style of Liu Zongyuan's prose is gloomy, cold and precipitous, with a kind of beauty, and points out that this style of Liu Wen is not only related to his long-term experience of being relegated, his cynical thoughts and feelings, and the content of his critical works, but also related to his melancholy, angry and cold colors, rich poetry, obvious allegory, symbolism and inflexibility. Deng Xiaojun pointed out that Liu Zongyuan's prose has two original artistic achievements: first, in biographical prose, he made a biography for ordinary people, thus breaking through the old tradition that neither official biography nor unofficial biography of China is for ordinary people; Secondly, in the landscape prose, the artistic conception of harmony between man and nature was created, thus creating a new situation of the artistic conception of landscape prose combining natural beauty with the philosophy of harmony between man and nature in the history of China literature. Liu Wen's two great artistic achievements are rooted in Liu Zongyuan's profound understanding of man and nature, thus breaking through the shackles of his early theory of evil nature and the theory of separation between man and nature, and transforming into an ideological system characterized by believing in human nature and adapting to nature and the theory of harmony between man and nature. The artistic achievements of Liu Zongyuan's biographical prose and landscape prose, Han Yu's lyric prose and biographical prose represent the highest artistic achievements of the ancient prose movement in the middle Tang Dynasty.
In addition, Wu Xiaolin also wrote The Art of Liu Zongyuan's Prose, which comprehensively and carefully analyzed the artistic achievements of Liu Zongyuan's prose from ten aspects, including his prose proposition, essays, biographical essays, fable essays, artistic features of landscape travel notes, ci and Fu, artistic style of Liu Wen, structural art, fable art and comparison of Liu Han's prose.
Landscape Travels Liu Zongyuan's landscape travels, especially Eight Notes of Yongzhou, occupy a very important position in the history of China's prose, so they have always been concerned by academic circles.
Reading Notes on Liu Zihou Landscape by Zhou Cheng is a monograph of Liu Zongyuan's landscape literature at the beginning of this century. Firstly, this paper spoke highly of the artistic achievements of Liu Zongyuan's landscape prose, and thought that "the lingering landscape of Liu, the modeling of landscape, the implication of melody, the soul and materialization are also everything in North Korea!" He also divided Liu's landscape travel notes into three parts: Yongzhou notes, Liuzhou notes and other notes. All the stories outside Liu Yong are different from those of Liu Yong reporters, so they don't pay attention to mountains and rivers, but describe the joy of sightseeing and the victory of pavilions! Always remember that willows are different from willows. Yi Liu is always used, Yi Yong is always divided, and the discussion is very close; This is the same but different! At the end of the article, it is pointed out that Liu Zongyuan's Notes on Mountains and Waters can be described as taking the advantages of Li Daoyuan's Notes on Water Classics and Yang Xuanzhi's Notes on Luoyang: "I am content with the bleak atmosphere and put it on the tour view. If you are Liu's, you will almost want to have both! "
There were many scholars who studied Liu Zongyuan's landscape prose in 1950s and 1960s, but the most noteworthy one was Huang's study. Although his evaluation of Liu Zongyuan's literature is a general theory of Liu Zongyuan's literary achievements, he has made great breakthroughs in the study of Liu Zongyuan's landscape prose. In his view, Liu Zongyuan's landscape literature is not "a manifestation of his pursuit of leisure life", but "a more painful and true reflection". "In essence, this is just that Liu Zongyuan chose a scenery that his political enemies could not see, as the object of his concentrated creation, to forcibly transfer his anger, sadness and depression." Besides, this kind of emotion cannot be completely hidden. In addition to his silly flow to the outside world, he can often encounter things like taking mountain and river experiences as his own. "This passage is the first time to link Liu Zongyuan's landscape travel notes with his personal experience and pain. Inspired by this article, Japanese scholar Shimizu wrote Liu Zongyuan's Life Experience and Notes on Landscape, and further discussed the relationship between Liu Zongyuan's landscape travel notes and his personal experience. In his view, "Liu Zongyuan's motive for writing landscape notes is not only to forcibly channel his anger, sadness and depression among objects invisible to his political opponents, but also to reflect his life. Yongzhou landscape is inappropriately despised by the world, just like Liu Zongyuan's situation. So he made a special annotation for the landscape of Yongzhou. "Moreover," Liu Zongyuan's motive in writing landscapes is not only to reflect his abandonment by seeing the beauty of abandoned mountains and rivers, but also to express his dissatisfaction and criticism of the world in the mountains and rivers. "These views of the two of them have been unanimously recognized by the academic circles and are often quoted by people until now.
In 1960s, the articles about Liu Zongyuan's landscape travel mainly included Talking about Liu Zongyuan's Landscape and Guan's Artistic Features. These two articles mainly analyzed Liu Zongyuan's artistic features.
Since the end of 1970s, academic circles have made many discussions on Liu Zongyuan's landscape literature, especially his artistic achievements, such as "Writing Skills of Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Travel Notes", "On Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Travel Notes", "Artistic Beauty of Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Literature", "Poetic Beauty of Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Travel Notes" by Li and "On Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Literature" by Zhang Jianhe. Among them, Zhou pointed out that after Liu Zongyuan's relegation, his complex inner activities were rarely expressed separately through discussion and lyricism except for the description of scenery. In many cases, his thoughts and feelings are integrated into the artistic realm of beautiful scenery. These realms are not natural beauty, but artistic beauty created according to their own aesthetic psychology. Based on the aesthetic psychology of seeking and creating the beauty of silence, Liu Zongyuan likes Austria and describes a kind of "quiet and beautiful" beauty; Liu Zongyuan also likes to describe the vastness of the grand view. This artistic conception of Gao Shuang and emptiness is a portrayal of Liu Zongyuan's desire to get rid of depression and depression. However, Liu Zongyuan rarely wrote grand views in isolation, but combined his broad vision with the Austrian vision in accordance with the artistic law of opposites and complementarities, forming a strong contrast to reflect his aesthetic interest and express his state of mind. Li Yurenwen believes that Liu Zongyuan's landscape lyricism has three characteristics, namely, the beauty of painting, lyricism and rationality. The beauty of painting makes Liu Zongyuan's landscape record harmonious and unified in form, spirit, image and subjective beauty, thus forming a far-reaching and poetic picture; The lyrical beauty shows his melancholy, lonely and restless mind, thus finding the pleasure of "unity of mind and matter" and raising his speculative ability and aesthetic taste to a more free, broader, more subtle and unique realm; The beauty of reason and interest makes his landscape records contain philosophical brilliance, from which we can discover the highest artistic realm created by his fiery mind of "worrying and worrying" Zhang Jian and Cao believe that Liu Zongyuan's achievements in landscape literature are not only related to his personal experience, but also closely related to his certain landscape literature theory. The main contents of Liu Zongyuan's landscape literature theory are as follows: (1) When writing landscapes, people must be written, and people cannot do without landscapes; (2) The scenery should be magnificent, so should writing; (3) The landscape of words must be full of emotion; (d) Landscape works should describe the beauty of scenery created by people. Judging from the development of landscape literature, Liu Zongyuan's contribution is a link between the past and the future: first, his landscape literature successfully pushed the previous plane description of landscape to three-dimensional description; Secondly, the description of thick-line landscape in the past was promoted to the description of thin-line landscape; Thirdly, the objective appreciation of landscape literature in the past has been pushed to an objective description with subjective feelings.
In recent twenty years, another important content of Liu Zongyuan's landscape literature research is people's analysis and research on Eight Notes of Yongzhou. For example, Huo's Selected Lectures on Eight Notes of Yongzhou, Liu Zongyuan's Eight Notes of Yongzhou and He Shuzhi's Eight Notes of Yongzhou should be renamed as Nine Notes of Yongzhou and Eight Notes of Yongzhou.
Biography, Fables and Novels In this century, academic circles have also made some progress in the study of Liu Zongyuan's biography, fables and novels. The related achievements mainly include: Liu Zongyuan's Novel Literature by Hu, Reading Liu Zongyuan's Political Fables by Niu Yongmao, Liu Zongyuan's Fable Characteristics by Dong Ming, Liu Zongyuan's Biography by Zhu, A Comparative Study of Liu Zongyuan's Fables and the Fables of the Pre-Qin Dynasty by You Li, and On Liu Zongyuan's Biography by Zhou Lujun.
Among them, Hu pointed out that Liu Zongyuan's novels are fables, which come directly from Zhou and Qin philosophers, with good intentions, but the style is exactly the style of Zhou and Qin philosophers. This paper quotes Liu Zongyuan's two novels, The Three Commandments and The Snake Catcher's Theory, and holds that the general idea of The Snake Catcher's Theory is exactly the same as that of Confucius crossing Mount Tai in The Book of Rites, but Liu Zongyuan's description is more detailed, so it can impress readers more, so its mode has completely become a short story. Dong pointed out that Liu Zongyuan's fable has three characteristics: strong independence and large capacity; Delicate and vivid, literature and art; Free in form and diverse in genre. Zhou Luwen believes that most of Liu Zongyuan's biographies are based on the lower classes of society, and the content and purpose of the performance are self-reflection. Lu pointed out that Liu Zongyuan excavated the noble quality, kind nature, beautiful mind and intelligence of ordinary people from small people with extraordinary courage, keen vision and profound brushwork. With a group of brand-new little people, it adds luster to the biographical literature gallery. He also used biographical literature as a dagger to dissect the society, and made a unique interpretation of his political opinions, which is unique in China's classical biographical literature. According to Tao Jin's essays, Liu Zongyuan inherited the traditional historical biographical literature through hearsay according to the principle of "taking Ming Dow as the pen", and his essays took a group of urban and rural workers in social reality as the inheritors, so as to criticize the shortcomings of the times and pin the ideal of bureaucratic reform, which has strong reality and ideology. Some works break through the general framework of biographical literature and have some characteristics of fable and political theory. However, some articles talk so much that they usurp the role of the host and relatively weaken the image of biographical literature. There are also some excellent works of narration, lyricism and discussion in his biography of steles, which have made certain contributions to the development of the biography of steles in the middle Tang Dynasty.
Since the beginning of this century, some scholars have also paid attention to Liu Zongyuan's political comments, essays and ci-fu, and have produced a number of research results, such as Yanji's Comments-Reading Liu Zongyuan's Notes, Yao Dianzhong's Ci-fu-one of Liu Zongyuan's literary achievements, Gao Haifu's ideological evaluation of Liu Zongyuan's ci-fu, Wang and so on.
Fourthly, the study of poetry creation.
Compared with the study of Liu Wen, the study of Liu Zongyuan's poetry is much more deserted, which is out of proportion to the position of Liu Zongyuan's poetry in the history of poetry.
Before the 1980s, there was no special discussion on Liu Zongyuan's poems in the first half of this century, and the relevant research was mostly reflected in some literary history, poetry history and Liu studies.
Ma Maoyuan is an early scholar who deeply studied Liu Zongyuan's poems. 1959 published the article "Liu Zongyuan's Poetry-Reading Notes II", in which he pointed out that,
Two years later, Chen Youqin published a poem about Liu Zongyuan and its evaluation. The author points out that Liu Zongyuan's poetry embodies blood and tears, which is not comparable to ordinary poems that casually talk about the moon or seek sorrow for no reason. In view of the fact that many people have criticized Liu's poems as "bitter" and "particularly sour" since ancient times, the article points out that "progressive intellectuals are interested in reforming politics and opposing the evil forces of big bureaucratic landlords and eunuchs, but unfortunately they were defeated and exiled to remote places, so they are sad and angry" and "should sympathize".
From the end of 1970s, after 1980s, the discussion of Liu's poems in academic circles was more in-depth and varied.
During this period, the articles that comprehensively analyzed and evaluated Liu Zongyuan's poems mainly included Deng Tanzhou's On Liu Zongyuan's Poetry, Long Zhenqiu's On Liu Zongyuan's Poetry Artistic Style, Li's On Liu Zongyuan's Poetry Style, Liang's On Liu Zongyuan's Poetry Style and Zhu Bangguo's On the Relationship between Liu Zongyuan's Works and Creative Mentality. Among them, it is pointed out that there are many poems advocating so-called "Zen" in Liu's poems, which reveal sentimental and decadent feelings. Only by paying enough attention to these aspects can we make a comprehensive evaluation of Liu's poems. It is believed that Liu's poems have three aesthetic characteristics: dilution, loneliness and fluidity. Its "desalination" is based on "image intuition", "mysterious view" and "wandering heart" as the main aesthetic methods, and on the premise of psychologically distancing itself from the real society; His "Loneliness" externalizes the soul by "expressing one's mind directly", and expresses the lonely connotation and vivid image contained in aesthetic interest by empathizing with others. Its "flow" means crossing time span, "looking at the past and present in an instant" and "putting everything at the end of the pen", giving full play to the aesthetic function of Lenovo, so that both oneself and the appreciator can reflect and appreciate its broad, profound and unique meaning and tortuous beauty through limited space. On the other hand, I put forward my own views on the deficiency of comparative analysis in the current study of Liu poetry. He believes that Liu Zongyuan's tragic temperament, tragic experience and grief and indignation constitute the basic characteristics of his tragic poetry style. He was in tune with Qu Yuan, accepted the language of Tao, grasped the fantastic momentum of Zhuangzi, formed a distinctive and unique artistic style, and opened up a unique artistic world for people. In the aesthetic feeling of tragic atmosphere in Liu's poems, people can appreciate the poet's sad mood. This is Liu Zongyuan's unique contribution to the development history of China's poetry.
After the 1980s, many articles have studied Liu Zongyuan's landscape poems, such as On Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Poems by Huang Naikang, Landscape Poems and His Thoughts of Confucianism and Buddhism by Jing Kaixuan, Empathy Characteristics of Liu Zongyuan's Landscape Poems by Cai Guoxiang, On Liu Zongyuan's Unique Artistic Conception by He, and Wandering Out of the Dust by Wang Qixing. Among them, Wen Jing believes that the artistic style embodied in Liu Zongyuan's landscape poems is closely related to his Confucianism and Buddhism, which is mainly reflected in his contradictory attitude towards society and nature. In his poems, "being born" and "entering the world" coexist, so it is difficult for his consciousness to keep an aesthetic distance when observing nature, so there is an "I" everywhere. This kind of "wandering at both ends, depressed and suspicious" is the unique style of Liu Zongyuan's landscape poems. This style of Liu's poetry "also represents the difference between the middle Tang poetry and the early Wei and Jin poetry." He clearly pointed out that "a variety of ways to combine deep and desolate scenery with the emotional tone of grief and indignation" is an important aspect of Liu Zongyuan's landscape poems. Wang Qi Xingwen pointed out that Liu Zongyuan was extremely depressed after he was demoted to Sima in Yongzhou. On the basis of his original belief in Buddhism, he believed in Tiantai and Zen. Buddhism's thought of being born has a great influence on Liu Zongyuan's attitude towards life, life interest, aesthetic interest, landscape travel notes and the creation of landscape poems. Influenced by Buddhism, Liu Zongyuan publicized his creative subject consciousness, got rid of Confucian utilitarian aesthetics, took a utilitarian aesthetic photo of Yongzhou landscape in Juck Zhang, and created an ethereal, secluded and quiet artistic conception in his works.
There are also some articles that analyze the similarities and differences between Liu and other contemporary poets, such as Su Lun, the similarities and differences of poetic style and Liu's originality, Zhao Changping's similarity and the change of Yuanhe poetry, Ma Lun's poetic style, the change of his poetry and China's Tang poetry, and the comparison between Fang Rixi and Lu Ding's five-character ancient poems by Wei Wuying and Liu Zongyuan. Sue compared it to. Similarities and differences in Liu Liu's poetic style: "Generally speaking, Liu Shi's popularity is close to that of Bai Yuan, not as deep as Zi Hou, but graceful." "Liu, Liu's poems are higher than retreat, because they are immersed in coquettish elegance, thicker than temperament, and go deep into the people. The difference outside the poem is shocking, so it can be said that it is clear to retreat, and it is high-profile to save the day. " Gai's poems are deep and short, and the thickness ratio of his sons is more prominent. "The purpose of Zhao Changping's prose, on the one hand, is to make some new textual research on the different characteristics and historical status of Wei and Liu's poems; On the other hand, I try to make some preliminary exploration on the development and change law of poetry schools through this research. The article holds that Wei's achievement lies in that, while the poetic style of Dali is gradually declining due to the one-sided pursuit of "the freshness of reason" (Preface to Zhongxing), he can remain immortal, reaching Wang and Meng, and with his unique personality and outstanding talent, the traditional pattern of Qingyuan Poetry School once again shines brilliantly. However, Wei failed to surpass the number of Wang and Meng in creative techniques, especially the fact that he was outstanding in high level but lacked many incense arches, which also showed that Qingyuan Poetry School had developed so far, and if it took the traditional road of prosperous Tang Dynasty, its future would be bleak. The reform of Qingyuan Poetry School has become an inevitable trend. At this time, from Du Fu in the prosperous Tang Dynasty to the further elaboration of Jiao Ran's poetic style. However, the outstanding understanding of the characteristics of Xie Lingyun's poems was not valued by the times, but it became popular in the Yuan Dynasty because of the promotion of Han and Meng. Therefore, Liu Zongyuan followed this historical trend, developed from the neglected side of Xie Shi, and created a new pattern of Qingyuan Poetry School on the premise of retaining the characteristics of Qingyuan Poetry School since Xie Tao. If Wei is the outstanding stamina of the traditional pattern of Qingyuan Poetry School, then Liu Zongyuan is the forerunner of the new style of this school. Liu Wei also said that what we should pay attention to today is that they are all representatives of the highest achievements of this school of poets in the middle Tang Dynasty. Liu Wei's difference should be to point out their similarities and differences in creative features, which occupy different important positions in the history of poetry. As for the theory that Wei and Liu have different tendencies in history, it will help us deepen our understanding of the similarities and differences between Wei and Liu. However, we don't have to follow in the footsteps of our predecessors and then compete with Wei and Liu Qiang. Ma has long pointed out that poetic style is a literary phenomenon that cannot be ignored in the history of China's poetry. Their creative tendency represents the development trend of poetry in the early stage of the transformation of poetry in the middle Tang Dynasty, and plays a connecting role in the transformation of poetry style. Its overall characteristics are "elegance and purity"; Later, Ma will be compared with the Ten Talented Scholars in Dali, thinking that the three creative tendencies contained in Tianbao's poetic style were once interrupted by the Ten Talented Scholars in Dali, but they were continued in their hands. Fang Rixi and other articles pointed out that poetry has a strong beauty of dilution, and its poetic style is similar to that of Tao and Xie. However, due to different life experiences and aesthetic tastes, his poems also show different style characteristics: "Liu Wei's poems are open-minded, while Liu Liu's poems are resentful".