A Study of Huiwen Ci（回文詞）in the Qing Dynasty（清代）

Huiwen（回文） is an exclusive form of literature in Classical Chinese, to be specific, it may refer to a sentence, or a text, reading from the beginning to the end, or reversely, we both get a full sentence or text with explicit meaning and special aesthetic effect. In Classical Chinese Literature, there are mainly two kinds of Huiwen, the Huiwen shi（回 文詩） and Huiwen ci, with the former appearing earlier than the latter. This project aims to study Huiwen ci in the Qing, which includes the following parts:
Part one: it will review its first appearance in the Song dynasty（宋代）, studying the reasons of its appearance and the influences got from Huiwen shi.
Part two: it will reveal the development scope of Huiwen ci from the Song to Qing dynasty. In the Song dynasty, there are only 50 or so Huiwen ci, while the amount is up to be more than 1000 in the Qing dynasty.
Part three: it will study its relation to the family culture, group culture, as well as academic environment in the Qing.
Part four: it will study its features of language structure in form of one sentence, double sentences, text as well as co-texts.
Part five: it will study its exclusive aesthetic effect via vocabularies, images, rhythm etc.

Ci meets a big opportunity for its revival in the Qing, when Huiwen ci has bloomed on the basis that ci writers show greater interests and passion in writing it. They pay efforts in digging out its language charm by deeply studying its word changes and further differentiating ci and poem in genre. Accordingly, this project will adopt the methodology of literary history, culture study as well as aesthetics. The previous research on Huiwen ci was mainly focus on the period of Song, with a small amount and a few achievements. As to the period of Qing, there was seldom any research on it. Comparably speaking, Huiwen ci in the Qing has the privilege of richness and variability both in content and form. Therefore, the significance of the study is to better understand how Huiwen ci creates its distinctive charm by changing the sequence of words order in the Classical Chinese Literature. What’s more, the study will greatly benefit the researchers in the areas of Classical Chinese Literature, Classical Chinese Aesthetics as well as Classical Chinese Culture.