Abstract
Ye Shi (1150-1223) was erudite in Confucian classics, historiography and literature equally, with an awareness of the fundamental commensurability between them, believing that their division was resulted from the split of "yan (discourse)". Discourse was epitomized in the language use in the Three Dynasties, with the nature of political practice. Literariness flourished after the Han Dynasty, gradually becoming trivial rhetorical strategies. In general, the attentions to "literariness" and to political culture were reciprocally causal. Ye Shi advocated the idea of "pursuing 'The Tao (Logos)' by tracing 'discourse'," that is, reconstructing the Tao governance through re-interpreting the Five Classics. For him, the harmony between inner and outer worlds, and the true meaning of the Tao of the Three Dynasties lay in the unification between nature, governance and words. His admiration for Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi, and for the Tang-Dynasty poetry, however, showed his regressive view of literary evolution and his attitudinal ambivalence from both a Confucian pragmatic and a literary scholastic position.
First Page
146
Last Page
154
Recommended Citation
Guo, Qingcai. 2014. "Ye Shi's Distinction Between Discourse and Literariness and His Concept of Literary History." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 34, (4): pp.146-154. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol34/iss4/25
