Abstract
Stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription are the important ritual text categories in Chinese traditional living; the writing activities for stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription continued constantly from the Eastern Han to Late Qing Dynasties, leaving a significant quantity of texts. This thesis attempts to clarify the development of writings for stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription from Eastern Han to Mid-Tang Dynasties through discourse structure analysis. Text is the combination of form and meaning, and literary genre（wen ti文體） is the abstract gathering of several texts. Through the analysis of excavated inscriptions, as well as the works from renowned maestros, the functions and writing patterns of this literary genre are first clarified, then its developmental changes during the period from Eastern Han, Wei Jin and the Six Dynasties to Mid-Tang Dynasty were organized, followed by the reconstruction of the literary genre history for stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription in the end, which to a considerable degree has been empty for over the long period of time. Commemorative stones steles were set up on the ground, with the inscriptions introducing and praising the position and experience of the person with merits via combinations of prose and rhymes; whereas entombed stones were buried in the cemetery, with the inscriptions briefly documenting the identity and pedigree data of the deceased. After the Northern Wei has been relocated to Loyang in the early period of 6th century, the Northern entombed epitaph inscription was clearly developing towards the complexity of stele inscription. The main reason for this development was that people treated epitaph inscriptions as a special duplication of commemorative stele inscription, such that the entombed stones may still preserve the posthumous immortality of the deceased in the case when the stele was destroyed one day. This motivation allowed for no differences between stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription, with the different publication implements being the only apparent difference between the two kinds of text. Therefore, they may be deemed as one under the circumstance of not differentiating them stringently. As compared to the traditional literature studies, this thesis is focused on the analysis of excavated stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription, so as to clarify the typical discourse structures for the unknown texts by numerous authors. Secondly, observations on the characteristics of the works from three famous authors in the literature history via renowned anthologies are included. Epigraphic texts have been developed for a long time, amongst which the most representative ones included Cai Yong during Eastern Han Dynasty, as well as Yu Xin during the late Southern and Northern Dynasties. Both of them allowed the text rhetorical expression to tend towards exquisiteness based on the existing structure, thereby leaving graceful styles. As for Han Yu during the Mid-Tang Dynasty has altered the various partial structures of epigraphic text, offering people with new types of options under the background where the literary genres for stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription were excessively matured during the Sui-Tang period. The discourse structure analysis approach applied in this thesis includes concepts and outcomes of certain classical Chinese linguistics studies, with the aim of finding out the composition model for textual meaning, hoping to clarify the literary genre for stele inscription and entombed epitaph inscription before Han Yu, as well as to provide an alternative perspective for observing the texts for literature studies which usually place emphasis on content discussion.