Abstract This paper re-expounds causes for the literary divergences in the Northern and Southern Dynasties according to the social and religious development and the scholar-bureaucrats' beliefs of the period. The paper argues that the Han scholar-bureaucrats in the north, faced with sharp racial conflicts, tended to believe Taoism which strongly influenced their literary creation bearing the property of primitive simplicity and that there was not so serious estrangement between different tribes in the south and the southern scholar bureaucrats turned to Buddhism one after another, so their tho...
