WEN XIN DIAO LONG and Narrative Tradition in Chinese Literature

Immense numbers of studies have been made of WEN XIN DIAO LONG,but few of them have ever attempted to explore and analyze Liu Xie's view of literary narration.In terms of narratology,the former half of WEN XIN DIAO LONG,a theory of styles,described and commented varieties of stylistic criteria,representative works and traces of evolution,actually containing numbers of contents about narration and narrative traditions.This adequately represented Liu Xie the thoeretician's primary attitude and viewpoint,who attempted to generalize practice of literary writing strictly based on the reality of literary history.The latter half of the work,a theory of literary writing,discussed a series of issues of literary theory,but devoted no chapter to focusing on literary narration,all the discussion centered with traditional poetic theory.This is not an accidental arrangement.Actually,it represented the mainstream literary view up till the scholars in the South Dynasties and also showed the depths and strengths of lyrical tradition of Chinese literature.