How to understand the gains and losses of the ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty

The ancient prose movement in Tang Dynasty was a prose innovation movement led by Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan. Aiming at the disadvantages of parallel prose creation since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, this paper takes the restoration of Confucianism of Confucius and Mencius as a call and the study of prose in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties as the goal, and makes changes in style, style and literary language. "Writing with Ming Dow" is the basic proposition of the ancient prose movement. Advocate simple style of writing, oppose extravagant style of writing, and emphasize the unity of content and form; While learning ancient times, it also emphasizes innovation, and advocates "learning what it means but not what it says" (Han Yu answers Liu Shu) and "only doing what it says" (Han Yu answers Li Yishu), which is contrary to tradition and is more important in originality; Emphasize the writer's ideological accomplishment, advocate that the article should reflect reality and interfere with reality, and "speak out if it is unfair." This is a literary movement called retro, which is actually innovation.

The appearance of parallel prose has made an important contribution in the history of China literature, but its development also has its own bias and disadvantages. The same is true of the ancient prose movement. The movement of ancient Chinese prose is a complicated phenomenon in the history of literature. In liberating literary style, overthrowing the absolute rule of parallel prose and restoring the function of free expression of prose, it has made indelible contributions to both practical articles and the development of artistic prose. But at the same time, we can't help but notice that the disadvantages of the ancient prose movement are also quite serious. In the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, after long-term efforts, people finally had a clear understanding of the distinction between literature and non-literature, and distinguishing practical and artistic articles was the key. This provides a necessary premise for the free development of literature in its independent position. The ancient prose movement, because it emphasized Taoism's rule over literature, canceled the distinction between literature and non-literature, which was a great retrogression of literary concept. Because the core idea of the ancient prose movement is that literature should serve the feudal political order, this will inevitably lead to the convergence of writers' personalities, thus adding a heavy constraint to the development of literature. The more feudal autocracy is strengthened, the more serious this bondage is, and the more "ancient prose" shows a strong feudal preaching color. In fact, it is difficult to see Han Yu's enthusiastic praise of "lust for China, lust for profit" in the Song Dynasty, let alone more formal orthodox ancient writers in Ming and Qing Dynasties. This is also caused by the inherent hidden dangers of the ancient prose movement.