The Research on Filial Writing of San Yen, Er Pai and Yi Xing

Although there are many different records and discussions about filial from Chinese ancient literaties, they all agree with the important role of piety thoughts on social ethics. And the rapid development of the Ming Dynasty popular literature provides an important artistic medium for the dissemination of filial piety. As the representative of the collection of short stories, San Yen, Er Pai and Yi Xing play important roles in conselling people with stories complied from street stories. Due to the rapid development of commodity economy, the pursuit of secular values, of people living in Ming Dynasty, are stronger than any previous era, which is apparent on the increased proportion of Shisheng Writing in Ming’s Filial Literature. Detailed reading is the important prerequis of this thesis, and the historical and cultural background of literature constitutes an important basis for the analysis, with the life experience of compilers. To sort out Chinese traditional filial piety thoughts is not the purpose of this writing, but to point out the specific performances of the purpose to uphold social ethics in Feng Menglong’s San Yen, Ling Mengchu’s Er Pai and Lu Renlong’s Yi Xing, relying in the traditional mainstream Piety Thoughts. Filial is not just limited to the relationship between Son and Parent, but also could be with Brother, Sister and Son-in-law in the range of family, and with Fellow comrade, Teacher, Servant and King, even though the social and cultural backgrounds of the particular era are likely to affect the social role of Son in play. Therefore, this thesis takes the Father-son Kinship in Five Kinships as the center, then analyze the interactive performances between Filial and Wealth, Lust, Chastity, Friend Kinship, Master-servant relationship and Monarch Relations, including the changes on content and form from the Filial performances based on traditional blood relation in Ming Dynasty cultural context.