A Study of "Lo-yang Ch'ieh-lan chi":in terms of Memory, Identity, Time and Space Narrative

Previous researches have studied《洛陽伽藍記》 from the respects of Buddhism, history, literature characteristics and accomplishment. This study intends to reveal different insights from the following respects: space, narrative, memory and identity.

In this book, space description is done after selection, except substantial evidence. What this study would like to explore is the difference between the original city outlooks and the one presented by Yang (the author of 《洛陽伽藍記》). From this point of view, we can discover that the city landscape perceived by readers is given by Yang and is meaningful. Therefore, the values of Lo-Yang considered by Yang can be categorized to “Centralized” & “Sense of History”.

In terms of narrative, most previous researches considered Yang did record the contemporary history which can be referred and proved to HISTORY. It’s quite authentic and trustworthy regarding the reality of the record. However, recent researches try to review the historic record from the perspective of narrative. Base on the above mentioned point, this study is trying to analyze the content, effect and interpretation of this book.

It’s obviously that “selection” and “reproduction” are two key terms, where Yang represents more important role, as Yang’s seeing was affected by his own knowledge and notion and there’s no absolute objective in the record. Readers see TIME & SPACE via Yang’s view, so it results in that Yang’s outlook affects readers’ perception. Therefore, this study further explores motivation and culture structure of the bias caused by Yang from the perspective of “Memory” and “Identity”.

It’s considered that memory, construction of identity and narrative of history are highly close to each other, so this study starts off from the theory of memory. Memory means “interpretation”, which means “history memory” described by varieties of channels and personal interests can affect views of “PAST”. Yang’s motivation of 《洛陽伽藍記》is to record everything he saw and heard to avoid oblivion, while he returned to Lo-Yang and found the gap between “current” & “past”. However, after selection, the content of his recording represents his personal identity.