Abstract In the newly unearthed documents, epitaphs of the Tang Dynasty make up the largest part. Familial factor is the most important aspect in the various characteristics of the epitaph. Therefore, to explore the relationships between familial factor of epitaph and biographical literature is an important subject in research on the newly unearthed epitaphs of the Tang Dynasty. If we combine the tomb owner and epitaph-writer to do some research, we can find that the close connection between the style attribute and the family property of the epitaph in the Tang Dynasty mainly represents three types of situations: The first type is written by the litterateur himself. This is a special type of biographical article, in which the author recounts his whereabouts, or traces his family, or expresses emotions or makes comments. The author's personality, psychology and literary grace can be represented as well. Therefore, this type of epitaphs not only reflects the essence of life itself, but also highlights the literary personality. Compared with the literature handed down from ancient times, the epitaph carved in stone mainly refers to the condition that the family background and life experience are written by the tomb owner, but some unpredictable things such as the funeral time and official position granted after death will still be filled by the author's family members or posterity later. Since the self-written epitaph is the biography which literati write for themselves, they lay emphasis on the shaping of their self-images instead of showing them off. It is well known that the self-written epitaph is an important genre of family literature, and in order to highlight the tomb's origin, the depiction about family narration naturally becomes an important part in the self-written epitaph. For the tomb owners, we can exactly know their origins. Meanwhile, for the literary form, it is necessary to use honorifics in an epitaph. In addition, people who write their own epitaphs mostly have a literary creation talent. And in the writing process, they describe the process of creation in detail, or place extra emphasis on the transformation road of literature. Consequently this kind of texts not only has the value of biographical literature, but also becomes a part of the literature history. The second type is written by family or clan members, which can reflect more characteristics of the family biography. As the epitaph is written by the family members, the narrations about family background are often more detailed than any other parts. This type of epitaphs has both similarities and differences in personality with those self-written ones or general epitaphs which usually narrate the owner's family background, especially in the women's epitaphs. The epitaphs written by family or clan members in the literature of the Tang dynasty such as the yang family, tsui family and wei family, are too numerous to enumerate. In this paper, neither elite nor ordinary family is regarded as the study object, but we choose the hus family, a second-class noble family of the Tang Dynasty, as an example to discuss the situation of epitaphs written by family members. For instance, the epitaph that Xu Jian wrote for his father Xu Qidan can be regarded as a classic work in literary autobiography. This article is written in the form of the rhythmical parallel prose. Besides, the narration and comments techniques are alternately used in the whole epitaph. Reading this epitaph, we can feel that it has a magnificent structure, a fantastic atmosphere and the elegant style that a great master should have. The third is a special kind of epitaph written between husband and wife. If we observe and study the epitaph-writer from the level of conjugal relation, we can find that the epitaph has characteristics of both family and marriage. But from the aspect of biographical literature, the writer pays more attention to the portrayal of the character and emotion expression. In the newly unearthed documents, there are plenty of epitaphs that husband writes for his wife. This kind of epitaphs often expresses very sincere feelings between husband and wife. Epitaphs written by the sincere emotion are very touching literary works, and should be the subject that can attract literary historians' attention. At the same time, these epitaphs also praise the wife's virtues and reach a high level on the moral values. Compared with the general authors who write epitaphs, it is comparatively seldomly seen that the husband writes epitaphs for his wife. Another situation that the wife writes epitaphs for her husband is even more rarely seen. But we can still find three such epitaphs, which are all concise and comprehensive masterpieces with sincere words.
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