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| From Historical Writing to Literary Writing: The Literary Evolution of the Epitaph Before Tang Dynasty |
| Lin Jiali, He Mali |
| College of Humanities and Foreign Languages, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou 312028, China |
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Abstract The epitaph is one of the important practical styles of ancient Chinese literati. From the prosperity in the Han Dynasty to the present, the epitaph has been handed down from generation to generation and the tradition never broke off. The practice has proved its important role and value in ancient literati and cultural life. Owing to its biographical attributes similar to history, its rich historical data value has been paid attention to by historians. However, the study of its literary value, which has lasted for thousands of years, is deficient. Now we find some new contents of the epitaphs in Printed Japanese Hongren Edition of Wenguan Cilin, including three in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, namely “Epitaph of Jiangzhou’s Governor Yu Bing”, “Epitaph of Jiangzhou’s Governor Yu Yi” and “Epitaph of Xuzhou’s Governor Wang Tanzhi”, one in the Southern Dynasties, namely “Epitaph of Yingzhou’s Governor Xiao Zizhao”, two in the Northern Dynasties, namely “Epitaph of Yanzhou’s Governor Hu Yan” and “Epitaph of Zheng Nan General He An”. The above epitaphs are all in complete chapters and the structure is excellent. Among them the objects of description were all important officials of the state. The authors were all famous literati of their time, such as Sun Chuo, Fu Tao, Xiao Yi and Wei Shou. They provide precious materials for the literary study of epitaphs in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Unfortunately, they have not been systematically sorted out.In the Han Dynasty, the stylistic significance of the epitaph was gradually established in its continuous practice. The diversified stylistic expressions which originated from the material meaning of “stone” gradually evolved into an independent stylistic connotation. The epitaph, which is represented by biography, became a typical representative. The expansion of the narrative needs of the epitaph in the Han Dynasty accelerated the creation of the preface to the epitaph, thus established the system structure of the biography before and the eulogy after. The stylistic infiltration from historical biography also gave the epitaph of this period a historical consciousness of “Mingde”, a historical content of “Shihe” and a historical language of “Yanzhi”, namely the characteristics of “historical writing”.In the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of the Wei regained official authority over the epitaph with a policy to ban engraving. The driving force for the creation of epitaph changed from “describing one’s life to highlighting morality” in the Han Dynasty to “pile up one’s position to display the great honor” in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, thus losing the consciousness of history. The great cultural change from the scholar society to the aristocracy society restrained the right of the creator to speak and the core sense of history was lost. At the same time, the wave of literary consciousness swept into the creation of epitaphs. The professionalization and formal beauty of literary creation constrained the free expression of the creators. The creation of epitaphs completed the transformation from “historical writing” to “literary writing” in the stylization process. Specifically, first, the epitaph started to have an independent layout. The emergence and solidification of the discussion chapter indicated that the epitaph was no longer a loose narrative collection but an independent article with a central idea. Second, the epitaph gained a more literary structural formula. The structural technique of writing section by section endowed the epitaph with a controllable length and a reusable paragraph. Third, its metrical pattern and parallel structure gave the epitaph a more graceful linguistic style, which also led to the weakening of its narrative function but enriched literariness.
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Received: 15 October 2020
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2021, Vol. 51 
