Abstract: Yang Shen and Wang Wenlu were neutralists in the debate on the relationship between parallel-prose and prose in the mid-Ming Dynasty. Under the trend of denying the parallel-prose , especially the negative trend of parallel-prose in the Six Dynasties, they corrected the bias of worshipping the ancient prose genre and broaden their horizons to the Six Dynasties. One of them, Yang Shen advocated the diversification of the system and style of the articles, opposed echoing what others had said, and inherited the predecessors’ traditions of selecting sentences to reach aims and to criticize. Moreover, Yang Shen objectively evaluated the famous sentences, paragraphs and articles from the Six Dynasties to the Tang and Song dynasties, showing an impartial attitude to the Six-Dynasties parallel-prose. While Wang Wenlu, on the one hand, focused on both parallel-prose and prose in his literary criticism equally. On the other hand, he criticized the ancient style prose of Han Yu and his worshipers’ genre and corrected their demerits, which performed the fair attitude on the Six Dynasties as Yang Shen and created a new literary ethos

Key words: the Mid-Ming Dynasty, Yang Shen, Wang Wenlu, parallel-prose of the Six Dynasties