Western Han literature

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the rulers learned the lesson from the short-term collapse of the Qin Dynasty, politically resumed the system of enfeoffment of princes with the same surname, in order to consolidate their ruling foundation, and economically adopted a series of policies and measures to reduce the burden on farmers in order to restore and develop agricultural production. Huang Lao's theory of "governing by doing nothing" became the ruling thought at that time.

In terms of cultural policy, Hui Di abolished the law of leaning on books in the Qin Dynasty, and "collected a large number of books and opened up the road of offering books" (History of Han, Art and Literature). In addition, due to the influence of a hundred schools of thought contending since the Warring States Period, governors all over the country have also imitated the methods of the philosophers of the Warring States Period, attracting all kinds of talents to their own door, making philosophy and social thoughts more active and free in the early Han Dynasty and promoting the development of academic culture.

The literary achievements in the early Han Dynasty were mainly manifested in the development of prose and ci-fu. Scholars in the early Han Dynasty had a lingering wind of wandering in the Warring States. They liked to run around under the authority of princes and dignitaries, cared more about the problems of the country and society, and dared to express their views, which promoted the development of political papers. Jia Yi and Chao Cuo are the most famous political writers in the early Han Dynasty. They paid attention to summing up the experience and lessons of the Qin Dynasty from weak to strong and the gains and losses of political power, and expressed their own political opinions on how to consolidate the rule of the Han Dynasty and improve the centralized political system. These political articles are broad-minded, eloquent, full of emotion and rich in literary talent, which have obvious influence on prose creation after Tang and Song Dynasties. Ci and Fu in the early Han Dynasty belonged to the rising star of Chu Ci in the Warring States, but the writers of Ci and Fu in the early Han Dynasty lacked the strong feelings of Qu Yuan, and most of them were imitations, and many of their works were lost. The existing Huainan Mountain "attracts hermits", and its meteorological features are close to buckling, making it one of the best. When Jia Yi was relegated to Changsha, he wrote "Ode to Qu Yuan" and "Ode to Birds", which permeated his personal life experience and expressed his political ambition, especially the latter, which showed traces of the transition from Chu Ci to Han Fu in system and style. Mei Cheng is an important writer in Wenjing period. He is famous for writing about the King of Wu and remonstrating his rebellion. Although his "Qi Fa" is not famous for Fu, its writing style and pattern can be said to be the first work formed by Han Da Fu, a new style of Fu in Han Dynasty, which plays an important role in the development of Han Fu.

In the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the feudal dynasty of the Western Han Dynasty entered its heyday. After 60 or 70 years of rest and recuperation since the early Han Dynasty, the economy has recovered and developed to a certain extent. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was brilliant and managed internally and externally, which further strengthened the feudal centralization of authority of the Han Dynasty. In line with this, in terms of ideology and culture, hundreds of schools were ousted and Confucianism was the only one. Confucian scholars represented by Dong Zhongshu, under the cloak of Confucianism, have embraced the ideas of Yin and Yang, Five Elements, Huang Lao and the name of punishment since the Warring States Period. It not only shows the rationality of seizing power in the Han Dynasty, but also points out the ways to consolidate the rule. Since then, Confucianism has been the orthodox thought of the feudal ruling class. On the one hand, it promoted the formation of a unified feudal empire and the consolidation of feudal centralization of authority; on the other hand, it ended the situation of a hundred schools of thought contending since the Warring States Period, and the thought was fixed on a statue, which had a great influence on the academic and cultural development at that time and later.

From Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to the end of the Western Han Dynasty, the literary achievements were mainly manifested in the establishment and expansion of Yuefu institutions, the prosperity of ci and fu creation and the appearance of Sima Qian's Historical Records.

During the reign of Emperor Gaozu, Sun Tong, his uncle, made a court document, which made Emperor Gaozu realize that "the emperor is the most important thing" and the importance of the ritual and music system in establishing the feudal dynasty order. Yuefu was founded in the early Han Dynasty, which mainly managed the activities of suburban temples and chaohui. However, due to "the big shots are too busy", they are still unable to carry out the large-scale work of "customizing music" ("Han Shu Li Lezhi"). Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty expanded the scale and function of Yuefu, and collected folk songs from all over the country on a large scale to enrich the court movement, with the aim of "making the past serve the present" (Ban Gu's Preface to Two Beijing) and "promoting harmony" (the history of rites and music in the Han Dynasty). The so-called "Wu Xuan Tian Xia is a ritual-worshipping officials and taking an examination of articles, with the Golden Horse and Shiqu Mansion inside and Yuefu assisting the law outside" (Ban Gu's Preface to Two Capitals), "Poems are recited at night, with Zhao Qin Chu as the trustee, Li Yannian as the coordinator, Sima Xiangru and dozens of other artificial poems, and the rhythm and octave harmony of Lu are briefly discussed. The establishment and expansion of Yuefu organization made it possible to record, condense and perfect local folk songs, which was of epoch-making significance in the history of China literature and had a far-reaching impact on the development of ancient poetry in China. The music played by Yuefu in the Western Han Dynasty includes 55 folk songs all over the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, in addition to The Song of Anshifang, which was founded by Mrs. Tangshan, Emperor Gaozu, and The Song of Sacrifice to the Suburb during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Now, except for "Eighteen Songs of Song Dynasty", most of them have not been handed down. " Song of Songs is a military music that absorbed northern folk music during the period of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty. Its lyrics are difficult to understand because of too many mistakes in words. Among them, a few love stories and chapters reflecting the tragic scenes of the battlefield are understandable and can be recited, which has certain practical significance.

Due to the need of "keeping things quiet", the creation of Ci and Fu in the period of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty was greatly developed and entered the most prosperous era of Han Fu creation. According to the Records of Hanshu Yiwenzhi, there were more than 900 poems in the Western Han Dynasty, not counting miscellaneous poems, while there were more than 400 poems in the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Sima Xiangru is the most accomplished representative writer of Han Fu. With its grand structure, gorgeous literary talent and exaggerated presentation, Zixu Shanglin Fu described the magnificence of the Shanglin Garden of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and the magnificent momentum of the emperor's hunting, which catered to the psychology of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, so it was paid attention to and showed the characteristics of Han Fu as court literature. Before and after the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, besides Sima Xiangru, there were so-called "speaking ministers" such as Dong Fangshuo and Gao Mei, who "thought about it every morning and offered it to the sun and the moon", and ministers such as Ni Kuan and Dong Zhongshu also "occasionally planted it", which formed the heyday of Han Fu creation. Xuan Di is also good at writing the story of Liang Wudi. There are also a number of ci writers around him, such as Wang Bo, Zhang, Liu Xiang and Hualong. In addition to some great poems describing the emperor's hunting and court gardens, some of their works are also called "debating happiness" and "worrying about (entertaining) the eyes and ears". But most of the works of this period did not exist.

Yang Xiong was a famous poet in the late Western Han Dynasty. His four poems, Ganquan, Hedong, Hunting Feather and Changyang, are imitations of Sima Xiangru's poems and lack creativity. However, due to his high academic level, some of them are still very fluent and full of charm. In his later years, Yang Xiong realized that Han Fu didn't help satire and admonition, so he stopped. He put forward his own literary thoughts in his works such as Fa Yan, emphasizing the social function of literature and the unity of literary content and form, which was of certain progressive significance at that time.

Han Fu is the product of highly developed economy, politics and culture in the Western Han Dynasty. However, as far as its ideological and artistic achievements are concerned, it is not enough to show the development of all aspects of the Western Han Dynasty. The highest achievement of cultural development in this era is Sima Qian's Historical Records.

During the period of Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty, "the strategy of building a treasure was to set officials to write books, and all the legends of various schools had secrets" (Han Shu's Records of Literature and Art), which prepared material conditions for the writing of Historical Records. Sima Qian's Records of the Historian, which was independently completed, set up a monument for the development of China's ancient history and culture. Historical Records centered on biographies not only created biographical history, but also created historical biographical literature. Lu Xun's "Historian's Farewell, Li Sao has no rhyme" correctly evaluated Sima Qian's contribution to the development of history and literature.

Sima Qian's Historical Records spread in the society after Emperor Xuan Di. Because its records ended in the early years of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, many scholars compiled current events to supplement them, but most of them were vulgar books, which could not be compared with Historical Records. The achievements of prose in the late Western Han Dynasty are manifested in political essays. Huan Kuan's "On Salt and Iron" and Liu Xiang's "Reciting Books" inherited the tradition of political papers in the early Han Dynasty, which were rich in content and clear in reasoning, showing the author's enthusiasm for saving the disadvantages of the times.

Eastern Han literature

In the first year (AD 8), Wang Mang, a consort outside the Han Dynasty, proclaimed himself emperor on behalf of the Han Dynasty. In the fourth year of Tianfeng (AD 17), the peasant uprising in Chimei and Lvlin broke out. In the first year of Jianwu (AD 25), Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu of Han Dynasty, made Luoyang its capital, which was called the Eastern Han Dynasty in history. In the nature of political power, the Eastern Han Dynasty is a continuation of the Western Han Dynasty. In the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Xiu took some measures to alleviate social contradictions and made progress in agricultural technology, which made production develop. In order to legalize his rule, Liu Xiu praised the science of divination, which began to rise in the late Western Han Dynasty. It is integrated with the study of China's ancient classics and becomes the dominant ideology in the ideological and cultural field. Under the influence of politics, ideology and culture, the literature of the Eastern Han Dynasty has also undergone new changes and developments.

Ban Gu's Hanshu is a representative of historical biographical literature in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It follows the slightly changed style of Historical Records, recounts the history of the Western Han Dynasty, and initiates the dynastic history of China, some of which are detailed and rigorous. In the old days, Han Shi and Banma were also called together, which showed that Hanshu, like Shiji, had a great influence on later history and literature. The political papers in the Eastern Han Dynasty, such as Wang Fu's "On the Latent Husband", Cui's "On Politics" and De's, inherited the tradition of the Western Han Dynasty and reflected various social contradictions and fierce political struggles after the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Wang Chong was an outstanding thinker who opposed superstitious divination in the Eastern Han Dynasty. His Lun Heng is a book of "sickness and falsehood", which effectively exposes and criticizes the theological superstition advocated by the rulers at that time. Proceeding from this spirit, he criticized the "flashy, false and unreal" style of writing at that time, and actively put forward a series of literary ideas.

Under the influence of Sima Xiangru, the imitation of Ci and Fu in the Eastern Han Dynasty prevailed, but the Great Fu in Kyoto, which started with Ban Gu's Er Du Fu, was a progress in the theme development. After the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty, politics was extremely dark, and Fu Feng began to change. Zhang Heng's "To Tian Fu" expresses the author's quiet mood of seclusion in the countryside with beautiful language and scenes, which is a sign of this change. After Huanling, some cynical literati, such as Zhao Yi, also wrote short poems to expose reality and attack the darkness of society. Although the number of this kind of lyric fu is small, it breaks through the long-standing tradition of fu and is the forerunner of lyric fu in Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties.

Most of the existing folk songs of Han Yuefu are works of the Eastern Han Dynasty. These folk songs have various forms, which reflect the sufferings, thoughts and feelings of the people in the Eastern Han Dynasty and are a great achievement of Eastern Han literature. Another great achievement of literature in the Eastern Han Dynasty is the formation of literati five-character poems under the influence of Yuefu folk songs. Nineteen Ancient Poems is a mature work of scholars in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Five-character poems created by scholars in the Eastern Han Dynasty reflect the life and thoughts of the middle and lower classes in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. Their authors all have certain cultural attainments. In their creation, they not only kept the simple and natural features of Yuefu folk songs, but also borrowed artistic techniques from The Book of Songs and Songs of the South. They strive for neatness in simplicity and naturalness, and see beauty in simplicity and fluency, which greatly improves the expressive force and lyricism of poetry and has a great influence on the development of five-character poetry in Wei and Jin Dynasties and the emergence of modern poetry.

philology

Compilation Group of China Literature History, Institute of Literature, China Academy of Sciences: China Literature History (1), People's Literature Publishing House, Beijing, 1962.

Sister Liu: The History of China Literature (I), Shanghai Editorial Institute of Zhonghua Book Company, Shanghai, 1963.

You Guoen et al. Edited: The History of China Literature (I), People's Literature Publishing House, Beijing, 1963.

(Fei Zhengang)