| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 國文教學碩士在職專班 === 104 === Zhang Da-Fu, Yuan Chang by name, self titled late in life as Ailing Hermit, or as the Rest Hut Elderly, being a castaway scholar of Kunshan locality in the late Ming Dynasty, had long been disregarded in the history of Chinese Literature .For nearly three hundred years had he hidden in the shady nook of the literary world. Although study of the anthology of late Ming Dynasty has currently become the prevailing hot issue , yet so few have been taken notice of Zhang Da-Fu’s works .
As a result of contemplating his own ailing body, Zhang Da-Fu was spurred to return to the pursuit of the spirit, and became possessed of a sober awareness of the ostensible complexity of life.
In his works ailing had since turned out to be a metaphor of the criticism of the vulgar society. And the aim of his anthology Plum Blossom Cottage Essay is not only to embrace the beauty of life, or to mourn metaphorically, confronting his ailing, but also to complain of the miserable of both oneself and the society by means of a physical enigmatic language ending up to transcend the secular fashion and to get closer to the human nature, revealing the inconspicuous truth of life, while establishing a peculiar and heterodox discourse.
The ego of the body haunted with eleven ailments, as he portrayed, has either implied the reflections of both his life experiences and the morbidness of the society; or compared his body of ailing to the state of darkness of the late Ming Dynasty, elaborating the passion for the concern about the tragical reality, his defiant gloominess, and agonizing indignation, or the gradually vanishing passion for the reality at the result of frustration brought about by his fight against the world, ending up with the addicted morbidity of the indulgence in his peculiar mania.
The according presentation of morbidity and conceitedness had proceeded the criticism against and reflection on the reality. In his works ailing was no longer a physiological phenomenon, it had already carried the heavy burden of the traditional cultural meaning and value judgment, revealing the harsh mental anguish and anxiety he perceived before the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Through the understanding of Zhang Da-Fu in this direction we can manifest the unusual ideal view of life and aesthetics.
Through the narrative of ailing in Zhang Da-Fu’s essays we ‘ve realized his multi-intension of sarcasm and implication through the manifestation of sickness and non-corporeal ailing hidden behind the constrained, distorted, and solitary flesh body, and the detachment and achievement accomplished by means of retirement due to the ailing body. And more importantly through the research of Zhang Da-fu, his figure of self-restrain hidden in the bottom of the society might be revealed, in the literary circles packed with thousands of peculiar scholars’ bearings of infatuation, mania, craziness, indolence, ingenuousness, fatuity, witlessness, passion, deliberation, peculiarity , ext, and preposterous ravings and extravagant atmosphere in the late Ming Dynasty .
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