First, the theory of literary essence.
Liu Xie's views on the essence of literature are embodied in the first three chapters of Wen Xin Diao Long, The Original Way, Asking for a Saint and Jing Zong. Specifically, it is embodied in three relationships:
First, the relationship between "Wen" and "Tao". Liu Xie discussed the essence of literature from the relationship between literature and Taoism. In order to explain the relationship between literature and Taoism, he first discussed that natural astronomical geography originated from Taoism. "Humanism" refers to the unique language and writing form of human beings, that is, articles. He believes that "humanity" and the text of heaven and earth are essentially the same, both of which are the embodiment of Tao and the concretization of Tao.
Second, the relationship between "text" and "sound". Liu Xie believes that Confucian sages can accurately understand and grasp the supreme "Tao" and express it in the form of language and writing, and the Hyunri of Tao can also be clarified by sages. The Six Classics is the incarnation of Tao.
Third, the relationship between "Wen" and "Jing". Liu Xie believes that Confucian classics are written by the sage's "original heart" and are a model of world literary works. Through classics, we can not only learn Ming Dow's content and imitate the beautiful moral sentiments of saints, but also obtain exquisite language expression norms.
Second, the literary theory
The analysis and discussion on the characteristics of literary works can be found in many pages of Wen Xin Diao Long. Here, the composition elements, genres and styles of the works are introduced.
First, the content and form.
The article "Love" is devoted to the content, form and relationship of literature.
Liu Xie regards the unity of internal essence and external form of things as a universal law. He classified natural things as qualitative and literary in order to explain the composition of articles created by people. He divided the generalized text into three forms:
When it comes to form, five colors are also; Second, the sound text, five tones also; Three is love, and so is five.
Emotional prose refers to the rhetoric and literary talent of human beings to realize their spiritual essence. Liu Xie believes that the noumenon of human articles actually includes two parts: text and quality, emotion and collection, content and form. He pointed out that literary talent is attached to content, and content can be expressed through literary talent. The two are interdependent and inseparable in the ontology of the article.
Liu Xie's exposition of the content and form of the article is called "emotion" rather than "literary quality", which highlights the position of "emotion" in creation and affirms the formal beauty of "emotion", which not only reflects the evolution of literary concepts in Wei and Jin Dynasties, but also has certain significance in correcting the disadvantages of Qi and Liang Dynasties.
Second, literary genre.
There are 20 articles in Wen Xin Diao Long, from Ming Poetry to Secretary, which focus on the genre of the works and discuss the nature, origin and representative works of various styles respectively. It is an important part of genre research and stylistic theory of ancient literary theory.
The genre classification of Wen Xin Diao Long is very fine, and the main styles discussed are poetry, Yuefu, Fu, ode, wish, couplet, topic, praise, monument, funeral, essay, harmony, seclusion, historical biography, hundred schools of thought, theory, imperial edict, strategy and expression.
According to the tips in the preface, Wen Xin Diao Long discusses various styles as follows:
First, "the original is the end of the table", that is, tracing the origin of various styles;
The second is "explaining names by chapter meaning", that is, explaining the names of various styles;
The third is "selecting articles and deciding articles", that is, analyzing the works of representative writers of various articles;
The fourth is "unity of use and reason", that is, to discuss the nature, characteristics and requirements of various styles.
In Twenty Articles, Liu Xie's thoughts on literary classification and literary genre are not only reflected, but also each article is equivalent to the development history of a style, which contains many important opinions on various aspects of literary creation.
Judging from the various styles listed in Wen Xin Diao Long, Liu Xie's so-called literature covers a wide range, including pure literary poems and fu, as well as classic, historical biography, philosopher and other applied styles. It can be seen that Liu Xie did not strictly distinguish between literature and non-literature. However, he listed the regular poems first, then the blank, and put Ming Poem and Shi Fu at the top of his stylistic theory, which shows that he still takes the works with strong literariness as his main research object.
Third, the style of writing.
Many chapters in Wen Xin Diao Long contain ideas about style, among which the most concentrated are style, setting and style.
First of all, the article "Style" focuses on the relationship between a writer's personality and style. "Style" refers to a writer's temperament and talent. Liu Xie believes that the style of the article is the concrete expression of the writer's creative personality in his works, and the difference of the writer's talent, temperament, knowledge and talent determines the different styles of his works.
Based on this understanding, Liu Xie summarized the style of the article into eight categories:
It is elegant, profound, refined, obvious, complex, magnificent, novel and frivolous.
Secondly, the chapter of "fixed situation" discusses the relationship between the style and genre of the work. Liu Xie believes that literary creation is "three-dimensional because of emotion, that is, the body becomes powerful." The "style" here is the article system, and the "momentum" is the style. Different systematic articles should have different requirements for style, and each style has its own certain style characteristics. A genre of works must have a unified style. A clever writer can combine different styles with a genre, but he must have a dominant style.
Thirdly, Liu Xie put forward the concept of "wind bone" in his article "Wind bone". The word "style" is not exactly the same as style, but it is closely related to style.
In Liu Xie's view, "wind" refers to the content associated with the writer's "endowment, temperament and emotion", which is vivid, fast and full of appeal in his works; "Bone" refers to a language form that is commensurate with the meaning of the text, concise and organized, forceful and vigorous.
Third, the writer's theory.
Wen Xin Diao Long attaches great importance to the subjective conditions of literary creation. In many chapters, it involves the criticism of the writer's talent and the study of its relationship with creation, of which three are the most prominent.
First, pay attention to the writer's innate "qi".
Nourishing Qi focuses on the relationship between nourishing Qi and literary creation, that is, how a writer should maintain a good creative mood. According to people's physiological characteristics and the objective needs of creation, Liu Xie pointed out that only by maintaining a casual and peaceful mind can the success of writing ideas be guaranteed.
Second, pay attention to the study and training the day after tomorrow.
Liu Xie emphasized that writers should save their strength, but he did not deny the significance of learning the day after tomorrow. The thinking, style and things in Wen Xin Diao Long all talk about the significance of learning and cultivation for creation. For example, in the chapter of "Style", Liu Xie divided the main conditions of a writer's creation into talent, spirit, learning and learning. "Talent" and "Qi" emphasize writers' innate talent and temperament, while "learning" and "learning" emphasize acquired knowledge accumulation and skill training.
Qi depends on nurturing, and knowledge and skills depend on learning. Only by combining diligence in study with adaptation in creation can we write good works.
Third, pay attention to the evaluation of writers' talents by literary criticism.
The two articles, Collected Records and Finished Instruments, are devoted to the writer's talent and moral character, which can be regarded as the writer's comments. In Tales of Tales, Liu Xie evaluated the talents, knowledge and characteristics of writers in the nine periods of Xia, Shang, Zhou, Spring and Autumn, Warring States and Han, Wei and Jin, and pointed out that before Wang Bo, most writers relied on their talents to create, but did not pay attention to the cultivation of knowledge. After Yang Xiong and Liu Xiang, writers paid more attention to learning and quoted ancient books for creation.
Cheng Hao believes that critics should take "literary talent" and "utility" as the judging criteria, and a writer's talent includes not only creative ability, but also moral integrity and political accomplishment. He opposed the writer's "writing without quality", criticized the bad atmosphere of "abandoning reality for China" at that time, and enriched the study of ancient writer theory.
Fourth, the theory of literary creation.
The creative theory of Wen Xin Diao Long is mainly embodied in the following aspects:
1. On the relationship between objective foreign objects and literary creation
In the chapter "Looking for Things", Liu Xie specifically discussed the relationship between objective foreign objects and literary creation. He believes that the stimulation of literary emotion comes from the change of natural scenery, and in the face of the magical change of nature, poets will have irresistible creative passion. Not only the emotion of poetry comes from foreign objects, but also the difference of people's emotional response is caused by the difference of foreign objects themselves. This idea of "feeling things and moving" is consistent with Lu Ji's so-called "the sadness of autumn leaves and the joy of spring". Based on this understanding, Liu Xie believes that natural foreign objects are an inexhaustible source of literary feelings.
More profoundly, Liu Xie also realized that when a writer faces foreign objects, the subject's emotions are not passively regulated by the changes of foreign objects. On the one hand, it is the writer's qi, emotion and heart, on the other hand, it is the appearance, color and image of foreign objects, which are actually in a state of two-way communication through the intermediary of audio-visual senses. Only when this two-way convection occurs between the aesthetic information scattered by objective external objects and the inner will and emotion of the creative subject can it be explained that the writer has reached the realm of "being interested" and felt the feeling of creation.
2. Ideas about literary creation
Liu Xie's exposition on the concept of literary creation is mainly reflected in the chapter "Thinking".
Shensi is the most concentrated, comprehensive, profound and wonderful description of the conception process centered on artistic imagination in China's ancient literary theory after Lu Ji. Liu Xie regards imaginative ideas as "the first skill to master words and the main idea of an article", so he attaches the most importance to the process of thinking and has the most nuanced experience.
Thinking contains many insightful opinions about imagination and conception:
First of all, Liu Xie accurately grasped the characteristics of "thinking for a thousand years" and "seeing through Wan Li", that is, not limited by the writer's senses and concrete external objects, transcending time and space and galloping freely.
Secondly, it emphasizes the spirit that "Tao Jun's literary thought is precious in quietness, dispersing five treasures, dispersing algae and snow", that is, only under a calm state of mind that is super-utilitarian and undisturbed can we enter the realm of free imagination.
Thirdly, it reveals the law of "wandering between gods and objects" in artistic imagination. The so-called "wandering between gods and things" means that in the process of artistic imagination, the writer's subjective feelings have never been divorced from specific images.
Fourthly, Liu Xie believes that all external objects in the process of artistic conception are contaminated with the writer's emotional color. The so-called "climbing the mountain to the fullest, watching the sea all over the sea" emphasizes the dynamic role of the subject's emotions on foreign objects.
Fifth, Liu Xie, like Lu Ji, also noticed that imagination in artistic conception is inseparable from the participation of rhetoric. That is to say, in the process of conceiving, writers always endow the images formed in their minds with certain language forms, so the visualized language becomes the "cardinal" of image formation.
3. About literary expression
In the article "Thinking", Liu Xie said:
Party, gas times before resignation; When the article is finished, it begins with a heart folded in half. What is this? It's easy to be curious if the meaning is empty, but it's difficult to be proficient if it's true.
In his view, to achieve strangeness in conception only means that the creation is half successful, and the other half needs to express "meaning" in appropriate language.
The article "Zongshu" is the general program of literary expression theory, and its so-called "Shu" includes both basic creative principles and specific creative skills.
The two articles "Fusion Cutting" and "Attachment" discuss cutting and typesetting; Bixing and Exaggeration On Bixing and Exaggeration: On the Image and Generality of Literary Language in Implicit Display.
Five, the theory of literary development
The discussion on the development of literature in Wen Xin Diao Long mainly focuses on two chapters: Time Series and General Change.
Time series discusses the law of literary development from the relationship between literature, times and society. Liu Xie listed the "ten generations and nine changes" in the evolution of literature from Tang Yu to Southern Qi, and investigated the relationship between social conditions and literary atmosphere in each era.
Liu Xie believes that literature is a reflection of the times and society. He believes that the development of society will inevitably bring about changes in literature. Through the investigation of the social conditions of the times, we can grasp the reasons and tracks of the development and change of literature. When expounding the literature of each era, he noticed the influence of the following factors on literature:
First, social politics and the ethos of the times;
Second, ideological characteristics and academic trend of thought;
The third is the monarch's advocacy.
The chapter "Overall Change" discusses the relationship between inheritance and innovation in the development of literature.
The so-called "communication" refers to the basic principles handed down from generation to generation in literary creation;
The so-called "change" refers to the new changes in literary creation due to the differences between the times and creators.
Liu Xie believes that the development of literature has both "transmission" and "change"; There are similarities and differences in literature of different times. On the one hand, Liu Xie attaches great importance to advocating the inheritance of tradition in his literary creation, advocating the study of Shang and Zhou literature with pure content and rich literary talent, and opposing the blind pursuit of novelty and change and elegance in literary creation after Han and Wei Dynasties. On the other hand, he believes that new changes are inevitable, and only by making bold innovations on the basis of inheritance can we promote the development of creation.
Sixth, appreciate the comments.
Wen Xin Diao Long focuses on literary appreciation and criticism, including Yin Zhi, Cheng Hao and Cai Lu.
In bosom friend, Liu Xie thinks that literary appreciation criticism is an aesthetic evaluation process different from the nature of creation. Creation begins with emotion, first triggered by emotion, and then expressed in words; Appreciating criticism is to understand the author's thoughts and feelings from the form of words. Literary discourse is the intermediary between the author and the reader, so literary appreciation is the basis of criticism. Only by further digging the emotion contained in the appreciation of "literary discourse" can we correctly understand and evaluate the writer.
However, it is not easy to grasp the works accurately through appreciation. When people appreciate criticism, they often can't have a * * * voice with the author and can't be the author's "bosom friend". Liu Xie believes that the following four factors affect the objectivity of literary appreciation and criticism:
First, the tendency to make the past serve the present;
Second, the tendency of "respecting oneself and restraining others";
Third, lack of literary appreciation ability;
Fourth, the complexity of the work and the differences of the critic's personality, taste and hobbies.
The above four reasons have caused the complexity of appreciation and the one-sidedness of literary criticism, so Liu Xie lamented: "It's not easy to be a bosom friend! The sound is difficult to know, and the knowledge is difficult to meet; Every time you meet a confidant, don't be a thousand years! "
So how can we objectively evaluate other people's works? Liu Xie pointed out:
First of all, critics must have rich creative experience and profound literary accomplishment;
Secondly, on the basis of "big vision", we should also be subjective in customer service.
Throughout Wen Xin Diao Long, Liu Xie discussed and expounded many important theoretical issues, such as the relationship between literary creation and objective foreign objects, artistic imagination in literary conception, the content, form, genre, style, writer's accomplishment, literary expression method, literary appreciation and criticism, which greatly enriched the treasure house of China's ancient literary criticism, developed the advantages and disadvantages of China's literary criticism, and improved the system and national characteristics of China's literary criticism. At that time, it was not only of positive significance to promote people's understanding of the essence, characteristics and laws of literature, but also had a wide and long-term impact on later literary creation and literary research.
A Summary of 2 Knowledge Points of Literary Theory in Wen Xin Diao Long
Last time, we selectively introduced the main literary viewpoints in the creation theory of Wen Xin Diao Long and the "style" in the style theory. Today, we look away to understand the artistic creation and inheritance discussed in the chapter of General Change, and Liu Xie's aesthetic requirements for the style of literary works.
Signature analysis
Liu Xie's exposition of literary development view is carried out from both internal and external aspects. As far as the external conditions of literary development are concerned, it mainly depends on the times and society. Time series and other articles have systematically discussed this. According to what Liu Xie said, we can roughly draw three views: first, literature changes with the social factors of the times, and its law is "quality changes with literature", that is, the two qualities in literature, simplicity and literariness, change with each other; Second, from ancient times to the Song and Qi Dynasties, the concrete expression of "quality changes with literature" is either better than literature, or literature is better than literature, or literature is exciting, and the general trend is simplicity. In General Change, he further revealed the reason of "replacing change with quality" from the development and change of literature itself, and put forward his own views on how to correct the bad writing style of "from quality to error, from near to thin". First of all, Liu Xie divided the internal essence of literary works into two aspects: "the body with law" and "the skill without law". The former originates from tradition and focuses on "cause", while the latter is rooted in reality and focuses on "change". Only by combining these two aspects can literary creation be "inexhaustible" and be regarded as a writing strategy. Secondly, changing ideas is not only a writing strategy, but also an attitude and method to treat literary inheritance and literary tradition. Literary tradition and literary heritage are indispensable factors in the process of literary development, which must be studied, learned, inherited and developed. Liu Xie's skill of changing is to correctly handle the relationship between ancient and modern times, karma and change. Thirdly, Liu Xie put forward the principles and methods that writers should master in carrying out the thought of general change. Although general change is about the development law of literature itself, Liu Xie believes that it can only play a role if it is implemented in the subject's cultivation and creative practice.
Liu Xie put forward a famous character theory in Wen Xin Diao Long. There are many different views on the character connotation of wind. Huang Kan, a famous modern scholar, said in the article "Notes on Carving Dragons with Literary Mind: The Character of Wind": "Wind is the meaning of words, and bones are the meaning of words." Generally speaking, wind swing means that works expressing emotions have a kind of thoughts and feelings, which are bright and bright and easy to infect people; However, bone should be regarded as an indispensable, energetic, upright and powerful language expression. Wind and bone complement each other. Without wind, there is no bone, and wind and bone cannot exist alone. In a sense, style can be regarded as an artistic style of literary works.
deepen the impression
Style is different from the general artistic style that embodies the writer's personality, such as elegance and elegance. It is universal, an aesthetic feature that writers generally pursue in literary creation, and also a style that literary works should have in content and form. Liu Xie's aesthetic ideal of "being honest and clean" is closely related to the personality requirements of intellectuals in China cultural tradition. The ancient intellectuals in China had a very valuable spiritual character, that is, the spirit of striving to realize the ideal of advanced society and the fighting spirit when the ideal was suppressed and failed to be realized. It embodies the indomitable and tenacious character of the Chinese nation and the noble character of advanced intellectuals. Character is the embodiment of this struggle and spirit in literary aesthetic ideal.