Brief introduction to the stories of four classic novels

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the pioneering work of China's ancient novel Zhang Hui.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms was very popular in ancient China. Song and Yuan dynasties came to the stage, and Jin and Yuan dynasties performed more than 30 kinds of Three Kingdoms operas. From Yuan Dynasty to Zhinian, the Pinghua of the Three Kingdoms published by Yu's family in Xin 'an came out. At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Luo Guanzhong synthesized folklore, drama and scripts, combined with historical materials such as the History of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou and Pei Songzhi's notes, and based on his personal understanding of social life, he created the well-known Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The earliest existing edition was published in Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty, commonly known as "Jiajing Edition", with a total of 24 volumes. During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Mao Zonggang, the father and son of Maureen, collated historical events, added or deleted words, and revised them into "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" 120, which has been passed down to this day.

1330- 1400, Luo Guanzhong was a popular novelist in Ming dynasty. His native place is Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, and Qiantang, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, which is uncertain. According to legend, Luo Guanzhong was a screen guest of Zhang Shicheng, a peasant uprising army at the end of Yuan Dynasty. In addition to the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he also wrote popular novels such as Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties and plays such as Meet the Dragon and Tiger of Zhao Taizu.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms describes the history of nearly a hundred years from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the beginning of the Western Jin Dynasty. The book reflects the political and military struggle, the infiltration and transformation of various social contradictions in the Three Kingdoms period, summarizes the historical changes of this era and shapes a group of heroes. In grasping the history of the Three Kingdoms, the author showed an obvious tendency to support Liu and oppose Cao, focusing on the description of Liu Bei Group, praising the main figures of Liu Bei Group and trying to expose and lash Cao Cao. Today, we should dialectically understand the author's tendency to support Liu and oppose Cao. Respecting Liu and opposing Cao is the main tendency of folklore in Luo Guanzhong era, which implies people's hope for the rejuvenation of the Han nationality.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has created nearly 200 characters, among which Zhuge Liang, Cao Cao, Guan Yu, Liu Bei and others are the most successful. Zhuge Liang is the incarnation of the "saint" in the author's mind. He has the lofty spirit of "devoting all his efforts to death" and the ambition of helping people rebuild a peaceful and prosperous world in modern times. In addition, the author endowed him with the peculiar ability of giving orders and calculating skillfully. Cao Cao is a treacherous man. His life creed is "I would rather teach the world to fail me". He is a political careerist and schemer, so don't confuse him with the real Cao Cao in history. Guan Yu is "brave and resolute" and "righteous as a mountain". But his loyalty is based on personal grudges, not the national justice. Liu Bei was portrayed by the author as a model of benevolence and righteousness, a corporal who valued virtue, and a man who knew people well and did his duty well.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms describes wars, big and small, with grand ideas and various techniques, which let us clearly see the bloody war scenes. Among them, the description of the battle of Guandu and Battle of Red Cliffs is ups and downs, ups and downs, and it is thrilling to read.

The book is not vulgar, concise and lively, full of momentum and lively.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms has brought the upsurge of China's historical novel creation, and its series of characters are well-known in China.

There are many versions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, mainly including: Ming Hongzhi version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with simple words and simple content; Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a commentary added or deleted by Mao Zonggang in Qing Dynasty, was written in the early years of Kangxi, and it is the most widely circulated book in the society. People's Literature Publishing House reprinted many times.

Dream of Red Mansions

A Dream of Red Mansions is the peak of China's ancient novels. The book 120 chapters, the first 80 chapters were written by Cao Xueqin, and the last 40 chapters were reportedly written by Gao E.

Xueqin 17 15? A 1763？ The real name is Zhan, the word, the number Xueqin, and the number layman. Great novelist in Qing dynasty. My ancestral home is rich in Hebei and Liaoyang, Liaoning. After the Qing people entered the customs, they entered the Zhengbaiqi internal affairs office. From his great-grandfather to his father, his family inherited Jiangning weaving. When I was young, my family was rich and powerful. Later, his father was convicted, his inheritance was confiscated, and his family wealth declined. Cao Shijia moved from the south to the north. After middle age, they lived in the northwest suburb of Beijing. Their family is very poor and lives a "family porridge" life. Cao Xueqin is versatile, good at poetry and painting, talkative and arrogant. A Dream of Red Mansions has been written for 80 times. Due to poverty and illness, and the death of my beloved son, it has become an unfinished work.

A Dream of Red Mansions, also known as "Stone Story" and "Jinyuyuan", takes the love story of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu as the main line and describes a series of love stories of young men and women inside and outside the Grand View Garden. At the same time, by describing the social environment of these love tragedies, it involves politics, law, patriarchal clan system, women, morality, marriage and other issues. In feudal society, expose the world at the end of feudal society, expose the decay and evil of feudal nobles and their rule, praise the rebels who pursue light, and declare that this society is bound to perish through the tragic fate of rebels. It can be said that A Dream of Red Mansions is an encyclopedia of social life in the late feudal society of China.

A Dream of Red Mansions has created vivid characters such as Jia Baoyu, Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai. Baoyu has always stood outside the feudal spirit and morality. He regards his official career as an official career, the words of the entertainment circle as a tool for seeking fame and reputation, and reading sages as a fear. He has a strong gentleman pants habit and is anti-feudal. He respects women, personality and freedom, and is a typical rebel of an aristocratic family and even the feudal system. Daiyu is an elegant, aloof and sentimental aristocratic lady. She regards love as her life, but her love is ruined because the aristocratic family does not allow it. Baochai is a feudal lady who abides by the rules of women's morality. She was also a victim of feudalism.

A Dream of Red Mansions breaks through the traditional way of drawing materials and conceiving, and concentrates the society on the whole family, while the Jia family is actually the epitome of the whole society.

The skill of writing people in A Dream of Red Mansions has reached perfection. The characters described are vivid, distinctive and have multiple personalities, which breaks the characteristics of typification of novel writers in the past. The author's main methods of portraying characters are: under the broad social background, carefully portraying different characters; Pay attention to the personality of the characters, and the psychological description is concrete and concise; Put the characters in a specific artistic atmosphere to set off their inner feelings.

A Dream of Red Mansions absorbs the nutrition of China's classical literary language, refines popular language and casts it into an accurate, refined, pure, vivid and elegant language.

The plot arrangement of A Dream of Red Mansions is distinct and is an organic whole. Its structure is not only interrelated and criss-crossed, but also well-defined and orderly, just like life itself, without showing traces of artificial axes.

A Dream of Red Mansions is an ordinary trivial matter on the surface, but it can see the big from the small and reflect the essence of life, which has rich and profound social significance.

After the publication of A Dream of Red Mansions, with its profound ideological implication and exquisite artistic charm, it shocked the hearts of readers from generation to generation and had a great influence across time and space, forming a huge Dream of Red Mansions in the field of academic research. After more than 200 years of ups and downs, A Dream of Red Mansions has not declined, but has become more prosperous, which shows the artistic value of A Dream of Red Mansions.

The version of Dream of Red Mansions has two systems. One is the fat censorship transcript system, which has only been circulated for 80 times. One is Cheng Weiyuan's Gao E finishing and repairing 120 copy system. A Dream of Red Mansions published by People's Literature Publishing House 1982 has 120 revised annotated editions, which is a relatively perfect new reader.

The Water Margin?

The Water Margin is the first novel describing the peasant uprising in the history of China.

The story of Water Margin has been circulated among the people for a long time. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Wang's "A Brief Introduction to the East" and other books have been recorded sporadically. Gong Sheng, a adherent of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote thirty-six poems praising Song Jiang. The anonymous Legacy of Song Xuanhe describes the deeds of Song Jiang and others. There were 25 kinds of dramas with the theme of Water Margin in Yuan Dynasty, and the story of Water Margin spread to the end of Yuan Dynasty, which roughly formed the scale of this edition of Water Margin.

The author of Water Margin is generally regarded as Shi Naian in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Shi Naian was born in Suzhou from 1296 to 1370. Famous novelist in the early Ming Dynasty. At the age of 35, he entered the Jinshi, then abandoned his official position and returned to his hometown to engage in creation. Legend has it that he had some connection with the peasant uprising movement at the end of Yuan Dynasty.

"Water Margin" takes the occurrence and development of peasant uprising as the main line, and describes the whole process from individual awakening to small-scale joint resistance to grand peasant uprising team through the different experiences of heroes from all walks of life, showing the inevitable law of peasant uprising in feudal times, shaping the group image of peasant uprising leaders, and profoundly reflecting the political situation and social contradictions in the late Northern Song Dynasty.

On the side of the oppressed, the author praised the just actions of the leaders of the peasant uprising to rob the rich and help the poor, eliminate violence and quell chaos, and affirmed their revolutionary spirit of daring to resist and struggle. Song Jiangyuan is a brave man who used his quick wits to help the poor. When he was forced to go to Liangshan, he "defended heaven", strengthened the prestige of the rebel army and won a series of victories. However, due to the duality of his personality and the limitations of his thoughts, he chose to compromise and win over when the uprising reached its peak, and finally ruined the uprising. Through the failure of Sung River uprising, the novel objectively summarizes the experience and lessons of the failure of peasant uprising in feudal times.

The story begins with the rise of Gao Qiu, which is intended to show that Gao Qiu is the representative of the feudal ruling group. The author also wrote a large number of corrupt officials and local bullies. It is they who collude with each other and fish in troubled waters, forcing good and upright people to take risks and rise up against them. The novel deeply excavates the deep-seated reasons of peasant uprising in feudal times.

The structure of Water Margin is very unique. First, it takes a single heroic story as the main body. At the end of the last story, another character is led by the transformation of events and scenes, and the next story begins with life events. Like a ring, interlocking, interlocking. There are also some stories with their own jokes, showing many heroes, such as Zhicai birthday class and Sanda Zhujiazhuang. One story after another flows like a trickle to the Yangtze River, and finally merges into a huge torrent and a huge hero party.

The Water Margin has successfully shaped the characters such as Song Jiang, Lin Chong, Lu and so on. The author is good at putting the characters in the real historical environment and closely connecting their identities and experiences to describe their personalities. He is good at describing the characters by putting them in a critical moment of life and death, and he is also good at using contrast and contrast to highlight their characters.

"Water Margin" does not have the slightest femininity and affection, but it has bold and rough masculine beauty and lofty beauty. This aesthetic style had a certain influence on later heroic legendary novels.

The influence of Water Margin on later generations is not limited to the scope of literature. For hundreds of years, The Water Margin has been widely circulated among the people, which directly promoted the people's resistance movement. The Water Margin has a great influence on later novels and plays, and the water margin story is still an important part of the drama repertoire.

The Water Margin can be divided into traditional and simplified versions. This article is complicated and simple, and this article is simple and complicated. At the end of the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Yang polished the celebration with Wang Qing in the simplified edition, and published it together with the numerous editions to form 120 volumes. Jin Shengtan, A Qing Jinshi, took 7 1 back to polish it, and took 1 back as a wedge to make 70 copies. The Water Margin, revised by Shanghai Editor of Zhonghua Book Company, is suitable for ordinary readers. The Water Margin compiled by People's Literature Publishing House is suitable for literary researchers.

[Literary Works] Journey to the West

It was written by Wu Cheng'en, one of China's four classical novels. It is an excellent ghost story novel, and it is also a masterpiece with large scale, complete structure and fantastic form to reflect social contradictions. The novel begins with seven stories about "making havoc in Heaven", and puts the image of the Monkey King at the top of the book. From the eighth to the twelfth, I wrote the stories of Tathagata, Guanyin becoming a monk, Kevin·Z descending dragons and the birth of Tang Priest, explaining the origin of the scriptures. From the 13th to the end of the book, 500 years later, Guanyin told the Monkey King the way to save himself: he would follow Tang Sanzang to the West to learn Buddhist scriptures and be his apprentice, and he would be saved when he achieved a positive result. The Monkey King followed Tang Sanzang on the road and met a monster on the way. Together with Bajie and Friar Sand, they embarked on a arduous journey to learn from western classics. His works were written in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, when the social economy was prosperous, but the politics was deteriorating and people's lives were difficult. The author criticizes this unreasonable phenomenon through stories. This work * * * one hundred times, more than six hundred thousand words. Divided into titles, each title is presented in a neat double way. The story tells the story of Tang Sanzang and his disciples the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie, Friar Sand and Bai who went to the Western Heaven to learn Buddhist scriptures through eighty-one difficult.

Wu Cheng'en (150 1 year? - 1582? ), the word Ruzhong, born in Shanyang County, Huai 'an Prefecture (now Chuzhou District, Huai 'an City, Jiangsu Province), Han nationality, novelist of Ming Dynasty. Wu Cheng'en didn't get a one-year-old tribute student until he was about 40 years old. He went to Beijing to wait for an official position, but he was not selected. Because his mother was poor, he went to Changxing as a county magistrate. In the end, he was falsely accused and left home two years later. In his later years, he made a living by selling prose and lived about 82 years old. Since childhood, Wu Cheng'en likes reading wild stories and is familiar with ancient myths and folklore. Frustrated in the imperial examination, Wu Cheng'en's life was difficult, which deepened his understanding of the feudal imperial examination system and the dark society, and prompted him to express his inner dissatisfaction and resentment in the form of strange novels. He said to himself, "although my title is intellectual monster, I don't know ghosts, but I actually remember the variation of human beings, and I have a lesson."

Journey to the West shows people a colorful world of ghosts and gods, and people are all amazed by the author's rich and bold artistic imagination. However, any literary work is a reflection of a certain social life, and The Journey to the West, as an outstanding representative of ghost novels, is no exception. As Lu Xun pointed out in A Brief History of China's Novels, The Journey to the West "satirized and mocked the world at that time and described it in an extravagant way". He also said: "The author's nature is to restore a beautiful and humorous drama, so although he said something sudden, he also said something confusing, which made all gods and demons have a human touch and sophisticated." That's true. Through the illusory world of ghosts and gods in The Journey to the West, the projection of real society can be seen everywhere. The author's attitude towards the supreme ruler of feudal society is also quite interesting. In Journey to the West, there is no competent emperor at all. As for the incompetent Jade Emperor, the King of Guo who loves monsters, and the King of monks who want to use childlike innocence as medicine, they are either bad kings or tyrants. The Jade Emperor's 100,000 heavenly generals can't compare with Sun Monkey's golden cudgel, but they make real talents become dirty grooms. It goes without saying that their rule is bleak and powerless. In Buddhism founded by Buddha, monks can't be obsessed with money, but Buddha actually acquiesced in subordinates taking bribes. Most of the monsters along the way in The Journey to the West are related to the gods and buddhas, such as the green ox essence, the king of gold and silver horns, the old gentleman boy and the lion camel bell, all of which are related to Manjusri, Pu Xian and even the Tathagata Buddha, reflecting the dark scene of the feudal society where officials protect each other.

The portrayal of these images, even if handy, is of great practical significance. The Journey to the West not only has profound ideological content, but also has made great achievements in art. With rich and peculiar artistic imagination, vivid and tortuous story, vivid characters and humorous language, he has built a unique art palace in The Journey to the West. The Journey to the West's greatest artistic achievement is that he successfully created two immortal artistic images, the Monkey King and Zhu Bajie. The Monkey King is the first hero in the Journey to the West and a great hero. He has unlimited skills, fearlessness and indomitable spirit of resistance. He has three characteristics: humanity, divinity and monkey nature. The great hero's extraordinary bearing is affectionate and righteous to his younger brother, but he also has the shortcoming of flattering. He is witty, brave and humorous, which is human nature. The hairy face is like a monkey, the mountain king is like a monkey, and seventy-two changes, and one trip is a god. And his biggest feature is that he dares to fight. Dare to fight with the supreme jade emperor, and have the reputation of "Monkey King"; If you dare to hit a monster, you will never let go of a monster and show no mercy to the monster under the golden hoop; Dare to fight against all difficulties, never shrink back and bow. This is the Monkey King, a dazzling mythical hero. The unruly nature of making a scene in the Heavenly Palace seems to have changed a lot compared with learning from the West. In fact, Wukong's character has not changed. For example, he cheated Erbao, a monster, and asked the Jade Emperor to send someone to pretend to be heaven, threatening: "If you don't obey, you will go to Lingxiao Jubao Hall to fight a sword." Knowing that the monster was sent by Guanyin Bodhisattva, I cursed her for "having no husband all her life" and even called Tathagata "the nephew of the goblin". The Monkey King, such a tough guy who doesn't "listen" and give in to strength, jumped onto the page.