The first stage is the late Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States Period. Representative works include The Analects of Confucius and Mozi. The former is pure prose with quotations, while the latter is mixed with simple argumentative essays.
The second stage is the mid-Warring States period, and the representative works are Mencius and Zhuangzi. The former is basically a bibliography, but it has developed significantly and formed a conversational argumentative essay; The latter changed from a dialogue to a monograph with concentrated arguments. Except for a few articles, it almost completely broke through the form of quotations and developed into a monograph.
The third stage is the late Warring States, and the representative works are Xunzi and Han Feizi, which reached the highest stage of prose debate in pre-Qin period. Their length is from short to long, their style is from simple to open, and they are unconstrained, representing the theoretical texts of various stages in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
Extended data
The influence of pre-Qin philosophers' prose
The pre-Qin philosophers had the most far-reaching influence on later generations, first of all, Confucius and Mencius thought of the Confucian school, followed by Laozi and Zhuangzi thought of the Taoist school. Under specific historical conditions, these two schools often played different positive or negative roles in the minds of scholars and literati in the past.
Generally speaking, the spirit of Confucianism's entry into WTO is positive, but the preaching of maintaining feudal order has a bad influence; Taoism's attitude towards reality is negative, but its "lofty" thought of refusing to cooperate with the ruling class and colluding with others also has certain good effects in a certain historical period.
As far as poets are concerned, the artistic style of those who accept the influence of the former is mostly realism; The artistic style of those who accept the latter influence is mostly romanticism. Du Fu and Li Bai represent these two different influences and styles.
The influence of pre-Qin philosophers' prose on the development of later prose is also obvious. For example, the political essays of Jia Yi and Chao Cuo, political commentators in the early Han Dynasty, all developed from the argumentative essays of legalists such as Xun Qing and Han Fei during the Warring States Period.
For example, Jia Yi's Chen Zheng Poetry Book, Chao Cuo's On Your Millet, and On Recruiting People and Stuffing People are all scattered, analyzing problems and getting to the point. Jia Yi's theory refers to Chen Qu, sharp and incisive, and his style is particularly close to Han Fei. Although The Analects of Confucius was imitated by later generations, such as Yang Xiong's Fa Yan and Wang Tong's Zhong Shuo, it had little influence on literature.
After Wei and Jin Dynasties, the study of Laozi and Zhuangzi flourished in the world, which had a great influence on China's academic thought and literature. Ji Kang has three theories: keeping in good health, no sorrow and joy, uncle Zhang Liao's difficulty in learning nature and solving private problems. Ruan Ji has three theories: Yi Tong's theory, Tongluo's theory, Dazhuang's theory and Biography of Mr. Adult. Both "On Dazhuang" and "Biography of Mr. Adults" use the question-and-answer genre of ci and fu to give full play to Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts. The harmony of language image and phonology is the further development of China's theoretical prose.
The style of metaphysical poems in the Eastern Jin Dynasty is unique, and Sun Chuo, Huan Xuan and Yu all think that their works are "all similar to the Tao Te Ching". Needless to say, it was the literary theory and letters between Qi and Liang that set up a bright new style for the literary world at that time, formed the characteristics of prose in the Southern Dynasties, and was also influenced by Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts and writing style.
Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, ancient writers have had a lot of hobbies and learning about the prose of pre-Qin philosophers. Han Yu, a famous ancient prose writer, once called Zhuang Sao, especially praised Mencius for being "mellow" and Xunzi for being "full of wine and small defects".
He tried his best to get rid of the old Buddha, that is, he inherited Mencius' fighting spirit of cultivating Yang Mo. His works, such as The Original Road, A Book with Meng Shangshu and Preface to Seeing Wang Xiucai, are all close to Mencius in spirit. Answer Li Yishu's theory is the combination of learning and nurturing, which actually comes from Mencius' theory of knowing words and nourishing qi.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Pre-Qin Prose