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BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CHINESE LITERATURE NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY NO.14
Publication date： 2010-12
Special Article From Mediocre Short Story to Famous Play： Tang Xianzu’s Transformation of The Peony Pavilion from Fiction to Play
The real source of Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavilion is a literary language tale named The Story of Du Liniang. The Peony Pavilion goes on the plots and structures of the story, but gives the transformation in writing by ingenious use of decreasting, increaseing, fabricating, and irony. In the paragraph of “the love in the dream”, The Peony Pavilion renewed Du’s exist circumstance and described the process of Du’s spiritual awakenig more exhaustively. In the paragraph of “the love between man and ghost”, The Peony Pavilion emphasized the marriage of Liu Mengmei and Du Liniang gone by destiny, further more emerged the process of Du Liniang pursuing love and achieving marriage consciously, initiatively and actively. In the paragraph of “the love in the world”, The Peony Pavilion wholly rewrote the original plots, rebuild the reunion end of the marriage of Liu and Du and lively described the success of Du’s love ideal about “be faithful to a husband till death”. The play fully spread the antagonism between the cult of emotions and the society, the individual consciousness and the cultural tradition.
The life story of the Bhikṣuṇī Utpala-varṇā is representative of womanhood in ancient India. In the Chinese Buddhist Canon there are dozens of similar stories relating to this famous nun, and include more than ten different characters. The most elaborate versions involve Utpala-varṇā Bhikṣuṇī 蓮華色尼, Bhadrakā（Madhurā）Bhikṣuṇī 微妙尼, and Kṛcchra- Gautamī Bhikṣuṇī 瘦瞿答彌尼. Despite a number of minor variations, the stories are largely similar, and center on the theme of retribution for incest and the six evil deeds. Utpala-varṇā is the most prominent character of this family of stories which consists of two independent groups, one centering on incest, and the other centering on the six evil deeds. Such narratives of the tribulations of womanhood are meant to illustrate the Buddhist concepts of karma, rebirth, and retribution for good and evil. They also reveal how the low social status of women in ancient Indian society, child marriage, and polygamy all contributed to their predicaments. The Buddhist path to salvation is presented as the solution to the great difficulties these women faced, and it can be seen that their entry into the bhikṣuṇī-saṃgha brought enhanced independence and opportunities for spiritual growth.
Theme Thesis Lion and the Buddha: The Ornament and Symbolism of Animals in Chinese Buddhist Literature
This study shows that Chinese Buddhist literature has constructed many discourses on the link between the lion and the Buddha for ornamenting and symbolizing the Buddha's nobility, dignity, wisdom, courage and power. In Buddhist narrative, the lion, as the title of the Buddha’s grandfather, indicated the nobility of the Buddha, indicating his birth in a royal family. Later the lifetime practice of the Buddha was also linked with the lion. The fast running of the lion symbolized the highest degree of Buddha’s meditation. The roar of the lion as a rhetoric depicts the Buddha’s power against other heretics in early period. After the Buddha achieved his enlightenment and began to preach his teaching, the lion was again used in Buddhist literature as a symbol of the Buddha’s dharma power, wisdom, and majesty. Historically speaking, the lion as an ornament of the power and wisdom in South Asia reflected the order of local natural world and how this order was recognized and borrowed for symbolizing the political and religious order in the human realm.
Theme Thesis From Supernormal Powers to Thaumaturgy： The Indigenization of Indian Buddhism in the Gaoseng zhuan
The accounts of thaumaturgy and supernormal powers found in the Chinese Buddhist Canon represent a paradigm shift which occurred during the course of the sinicization of Indian Buddhism. I explore this phenomenon from a macrocosmic perspective, and make a thorough analysis of the historical usage of the terms shen 神, yi 異, and tong 通, and also investigate the reasons for the use of the two separate terms 神通 (shentong, supernormal powers) and 神異(shenyi, thaumaturgy)in scripture translation. I then investigate the concept of sorcery in the early Chinese translations of the scriptures of both the Greater and Lesser Vehicles, and go on to examine the images are lore of eminent monks which were transmitted in the Buddhist saṃgha prior to the composition of the Gaoseng zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks) by Huijiao, as reflected in historical records. Finally, I present a summary of how Huijiao made use of his position as preceptor and vinaya master to change the usage and categorization of shenyi, establish the distinction between shentong and shenyi, record contemporary history, and mold a new image of eminent monks.
The Liu family in Yizheng was famous scholars during middle and late Qing Dynasty until the early 20 th century. Engaging in document-related works for generations, they had obtained extraordinary achievement in classical learning, comparison of texts, and the study of ‘fangzhi’. From the experience of their work, they brought up some points of view and principles to pay attention to when doing works of proofreading. The discussion of this article is focused on the works of Liu family. And the principles and methods used by the Liu family may well be useful reference even in present-day works of ancient texts interpretation.
The aim of this article is to observe “Bie Fencheng Canglu”, which is a piece in Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu. The first part of this article is to list Sutras’ directories and styles from the past dynasties according to section 10 of Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu for the following statements. Second, according to “Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu-Bie Fencheng Canglu”, this article discusses the seven styles of contents and the history. Last, this article provides reviews and amendments of “Bie Fencheng Canglu”. “Bie Fencheng Canglu” is a piece of Kaiyuan Shijiao Lu which is well-known for its rigorous research and disciplinary category and it is also a necessary process for editing Dazangjing. This article focuses on exploring “Bie Fencheng Canglu” , and is also worthy for scholars who are researching in Sutra’s directories and Dazangjing to refer to.
Many researchers studied Wang Quan Shan's commentaries on Xie Ling-yun’s poems, aim to why Wang praised Xie’s poems pretty highly? Although there is no proper answer so far. To be aimed at this debate subject, I will try to discuss this subject in three different dimension : First, In taking the view of “fusion between emotion and scene” , Wang thinks that Xie’s poems expressed the feeling of poet based on the correlation between heaven and human. Secondly, in Wang’s viewpoint that Xie’s scenery poems respond to the “Concept is the dominant factor in poetry” , according this, Wang remade a discussion. Third, Wang thinks that poetry’s development is gradually declined. This tendency fits and matches to the occurrence of regulated verse. So Wang likes Ancient Poem more than regulated verse, he admired Xie’s ancient poems very much as well. Wang’s commentary was located at the special time point: the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty, so he is the sentimental poet, and can’t go back to the naïve age-during Jin and Song Dynasties-poetry still maintain purity by itself.
This essay examines the rhetorical transformation of recent Chinese poetry in both Taiwan and mainland China since the 1990s, in the light of Lacanian theory of the deconstruction of the Symbolic. The poetic language that displays losses in symbolic expression triggers desire – a desire destined to be impeded, and thus a desire for impediment, according to Žižek – towards the objet petit a, the unsymbolizable remnant from the Real. Lacan regards desire as a metonymy, which, as this essay demonstrates, is the fundamental rhetorical characteristic of Chinese poetry today. By analyzing the metonymic expressions in contemporary Chinese poetry, this essay probes how a new poetic expression challenges the mode of grand discourse, and reveals trauma and jouissance under the Symbolic order.
