陳玄祐 <離魂記> 硏究

Abstract

This paper focuses on the origin and writing creative techniques and affirms the significance and value of the novel Li Hun Ji written by Chen Xuanyou, a forerunner who has developed Chinese Ghost novel and obtained unique achievement on the tradition of the Weird Fictions during the Six Dynasties. The early form of the novels in the genre of Li Hun (the body without the soul) in China was the strange anecdotes described in the form of historical narrative. You Ming Lu⋅Pang A, a rough story, was the first Li Hun story describing a soul still alive just because of love after leaving the body. And the unique setting of Li Hun provided a new method for the novel development. When this writing genre passed to Tang Dynasty, the Li Hun Ji was born as the result of great development and maturity of the literary people who lay the emphasis on the aesthetic value of the works, along with the cognition to religious belief and the life attitude towards reality. As to the description of the character, the writer, through direct and indirect methods, showed the character vividly and demonstrated the ideal of the love beyond life and death and freedom of marriage and successfully expressed the theme. The novel, in particular, accused the marriage system of its unfairness at that time, expressed his resistance to the feudal ethics, reflected the thinking forms of the oppressed women, and conveyed the characteristics of the times and cultural connotation. The real appearances and feelings were revealed in unique narrative techniques through the clever combinations between fiction and reality, fantasies and truth, and ideal and realities. This unique narrative technique, with both a high artistic appeal and a new aesthetic value, not only guided the new way in literary creation, but became a basic of pattern of Li Hun in Chinese novels classification. In addition to attracting many recreations of the same subject on novels and dramas, the impact of the novel on future generation provided a Li Hun thinking form and a writing method of “reality described as fantasy” in other literary fields, which had a profound effect on Chinese literary creation. Chen Xuanyou’s Li Hun Ji acted as a bridge in artistic skills by adding writer’s conscious effort to the existing material. The novel made a great contribution to the development and maturity of Chinese novel by suggesting a new direction in the creative method and the value of this novel needs revaluating.