What is a novel?

In the traditional culture of China, classical novels are a valuable literary heritage. But in ancient China, novels were regarded as "trails" or "unofficial history" and could not be elegant. Therefore, the orthodox literati who dominated the feudal society in China not only did not write novels, but also despised and even hostile novels, and the official book catalogue did not accept novels. However, in such an atmosphere, China's classical novels have been greatly developed, and not only many well-known long and short masterpieces have appeared, but also some masterpieces such as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, The Journey to the West, Jin Ping Mei and A Dream of Red Mansions have attracted the attention of the world literary world. China's classical novels established an artistic system combining classical realism and romanticism in the tortuous and long development process, which painted colorful pictures of ancient society for us, enriched the literary treasure house of the motherland and even the world, and had high cognitive value and aesthetic value.

When did China's novels begin? Some people think that the "strange novels" in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties-Gan Bao's Searching for the Gods and Anecdotes-Liu Yiqing's Shi Shuo Xin Yu are the pioneering works of China's novels. We think that the first page of China's novel history should be the legend of Tang Dynasty. Of course, before this, there were a few narrative works with novel artistic features, such as Cao Zhi's Ode to Luoshen and Tao Qian's The Peach Blossom Garden. Even stories and essays are usually classified as novels by some literary historians. As far as the overall phenomenon of narrative literature is concerned, they can only be regarded as the embryonic form of novels at most, and they are not novels that strictly conform to the artistic concept of modern novels.

Legends of the Tang Dynasty began to appear in the early 7th century, entered a prosperous period in the 8th century, and 10 began to decline in the late Tang Dynasty. The name "Tang Legend" first appeared in Pei Qi's collection of late Tang novels. After the Song Dynasty, the novels of the Tang people were collectively called legends, that is, they were named after non-literary orthodoxy, meaning "telling anecdotes". In the history of China's novel development, the legend of the Tang Dynasty is like a wonderful flower, colorful. First of all, it marks the formal formation of novel art, the highest form of China's narrative literature. Secondly, it truly and vividly reflected the social life at that time-the ugliness of officialdom in feudal society and the habit of intellectuals obsessed with fame and fortune; Thirdly, it shows the good wishes of young men and women to break through the shackles of feudal ethics and strive for the independence of love and marriage; Finally, some legends and historical stories have certain political critical significance. Such as Yuan Zhen's Biography of Yingying, Bai Xingjian's Biography of Li Wa, Wang Du's Ancient Mirror and Zhang Wencheng's Wandering Fairy Cave. A large number of writers and works have had a great influence on the present and future generations.

Novels developed to the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and novels in this period were called "storytelling", which were roughly divided into two categories: first, novels (short stories); The second is to talk about history (long). There are many scripts in Song and Yuan Dynasties, most of which have been lost due to historical reasons. However, we can still see its ideological content and artistic characteristics from some existing scripts. As far as the content of the existing story books is concerned, there are two kinds of works, love and case-solving, and some of them show patriotism. Most long story books are based on historical books. In art, story books have made many new developments compared with Tang legends. In order to attract the audience, they attach great importance to touching stories. In addition, we also began to pay attention to using typical details to describe the characters and express their inner activities. Long stories often come to an abrupt end where the story is fascinating, so as to attract the audience to listen again. This is the origin of Zhang Hui's novels, which formed a unique style different from other countries' novels.

On the basis of the development of novels in Tang, Song and Yuan Dynasties, novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties have achieved unprecedented development and improvement, showing a scene of prosperity. In particular, novel creation has achieved the same remarkable and fruitful results as Tang poetry, Song ci and Yuan zaju.

Among many novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties, novels have the greatest influence and the highest achievements. Generally speaking, it can be divided into three categories: one is the school of writing history (historical romance); The second is the fantasy school (ghost novel); Third, the world sentiment school (human feelings, talented people and beautiful women, satire, condemnation novels, etc. ).

Shi Naian's Water Margin and Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms are the first representatives of the first kind of novels. The Water Margin is a novel accumulated from generation to generation. As early as the Southern Song Dynasty, two or three hundred years before Shi Naian finally wrote it, the heroic deeds of Song Jiang and others were widely circulated. This can be confirmed in the existing scripts of the Song Dynasty. Shi Naian's outstanding contribution is that, on the basis of folklore, drama and script, he gave full play to his artistic talent and creatively made it an excellent work that profoundly reflected social reality. Secondly, the characterization of 108 shows that the characters in ancient novels began to develop from typology to typicality. If Water Margin is a social struggle novel with historical theme, then Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the most standard historical novel. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, like Water Margin, is a novel accumulated from generation to generation. The difference is that it is "seven points of fact and three points of fiction", which has become the pioneering work of China's novels and the cornerstone of historical novels. Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms is remarkable for its ideological and artistic quality and its special contribution to the development of China's novels.

The representative work of the second kind of novels, The Journey to the West of Wu Cheng'en, is even more out of the question. The Journey to the West's romantic masterpiece is not Wu Cheng'en's personal creation, but an accumulated novel, just like The Water Margin and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. From this, we can easily find a regular phenomenon in the history of China literature-novels, singing literature and opera art are closely related. Different from Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong, Wu Cheng'en showed the writer's personal style in The Journey to the West, which marked the transition of China's novels from collective creation to individual creation.

There are a large number of novels in the third category, among which Jin Ping Mei by Xiao Xiaosheng in Lan Ling and A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin are representative works. Who is the author of Jin Ping Mei, Lan Ling Xiaoxiao? It can be said that it has been an unsolved mystery since it came out. But it didn't affect it to rank among the world famous books. Nowadays, the study of Jin Ping Mei in domestic academic circles has become a science-"Jin Xue". Jin Ping Mei, with the help of the Song Dynasty and through various social contacts in Ximen Qing, wrote "all aspects" of street life at that time from a wide perspective. However, its position in the history of literature is not limited to this. More importantly, it opens a new page for literati to create novels independently and pushes the development of China's classical novels to a peak. A Dream of Red Mansions comprehensively, meticulously and profoundly exposes and criticizes the end of feudal society, thus revealing the historical development trend of the inevitable demise of feudal society. In art, A Dream of Red Mansions is the representative work of China's classical novels, with vivid characters, rigorous and exquisite artistic structure and superb language attainments, which is incomparable to any classical novel. Since its publication, A Dream of Red Mansions has had a great influence on both the present and future generations, which is manifested in the appearance of the old and new Dream of Red Mansions and the research upsurge of the contemporary Dream of Red Mansions. But also has great influence in the world literary world.

With the prosperity of novels, the collection and creation of short stories also show some achievements, and the representative works are Feng Menglong's Sanyan (Yu's famous sayings, famous sayings and famous sayings).

After Feng Menglong, vernacular short stories declined for a time, and Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio in Qing Dynasty made an incisive summary of China's classical classical short stories. Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a collection of classical Chinese short stories written by Pu Shi in the way of Tang legend, which represents the artistic peak of China's classical short stories from the aspects of novel content, writing method and language application.