This dissertation, with the title of "An Exploration of Liu Zi", discusses the author of Liu Zi, as well as its versions and literary critiques from the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
The discussion of the author is divided into two parts: one is supplemented by Mr. Chen Zhiping's latest paper; the other part is comparing and contrasting Liu Zi and The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, based on the notion that how the world is perceived via human senses and the application of new literature and methods, to return the copyright of Liu Zi to Liu Xie.
It also collects and categorizes the literary texts of the current versions as the bases of the literature review, and organizes the research context of the versions of Liu Zi.
As for the critiques, they are divided into the literary critiques from the Ming Dynasty and the version collation from the Qing Dynasty by exploring the four scholars—Sun Kuang and Jiang Yihua of the Ming Dynasty along with Xian Bogong and Zhang Shaoren of the Qing Dynasty. The Late Ming Dynasty scholars Sun Kuang and Jiang Yihua were considered conservative in the literary world. They did not completely agree with the contemporary pursuit of new changes, but hoped to find a way to compromise in between. Thus, Liu Zi, was interpreted by them respectively as a paradigm to fuse the new and the old. Both Sun and Jiang applauded the literary value of Liu Zi in addition to its solid arguments, which could be served as new critiques to reverse the previous ones that Liu Zi lacked literary value. In addition, the critique of the version collation made by the Japanese sinologists Xian Bogong and Zhang Shaoren helps supplement the merits and flaws of the previous versions and comprehend the subtle differences in their choices of words, which facilitates the understanding of version collation method adopted by the traditional Sinology. Through the comparison of the aforementioned critiques made in Ming and Qing dynasties, it can be seen that in terms of the research of Liu Zi, scholars from different dynasties value different academic interests that correspond with their times.