Study Of The Novels Of Comprehensive Anal Of Oddities During The Dynasties Of Wei And Jin, And Northern And Southern Dynasty

Comprehensive anal of oddities is one important and distinctive genres of novel during the Wei, Jin, northern and southern dynasties, which is inadequately studied by researchers for a long time. Even though it is studied by some scholars, it is viewed with the western literary theories, leading to the different interpretations toward this novel genre. As a matter of fact, Comprehensive anal of oddities has its own unique and special way of interpretation. If seen in the context of its current history, we can view it in a different perspective; we can obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the ideas and cultures during the northern and southern dynasties of Wei and Jin; we can find the special mental state of the men of letters, especially the ordinary intellectuals, which is of great benefit to the study and examination of the relations between literature and its time and the author's mentality; we can be inspired to study the compilation of similar books and to find the new fashion of monographs since 3 AD; we can better combine literature, history and philosophy from horizontal and vertical dimensions and illustrate each other to find out new things.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is a comprehensive summary of the current research of the anal of oddities novel in the academic field。Presently, the academic realm basically figures out the storage and missing of the novel, and has published an annotated version. Besides, it is generally acknowledged that ancient mythology, historical literature and allegories are the three origins of the anal of oddities novel. However, there are still some mooting points concerning the aesthetic understanding of each sub-genre and the classification of novel type. The author of the thesis thinks that we should combine the study of the writers and the works, since different writer has its own motive of creating and thus the works are marked by the writers'distinct features. Therefore, only by uniting the two can we have a better understanding of its motif. The author of this thesis divides the novel of the annals of oddities into four types—according to the writing intentions of the writers: hunting for the odds, satirizing the world, mystifying the religion, and knowing things.Chapter two analyzes the concept of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities. Its basic features: richness and variety. Its richness refers to the rich content, while its variety refers to the various contents and flexible layout style. Representatives of this kind of novel are: Annals of Knowing Things by Zhang Hua, Record in Meditation by Guo Pu, Odds Garden by Liu Jingshu and Narrating Odds Record by Ren Fang. The uniqueness of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities lies in the literary form organically combined by its outer religion, inner knowing-things-idea and the form of the novel. Its structure and themes inherited the structuring approach of works like Book of Mountains and Seas; the idea of knowing things in traditional culture made a great impact on the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities. The creating notions of the writers of The Verse Prose of Han, the way of depicting things and the narrative structure of The Verse Prose of Han all made great contributions in interpreting the subtleness of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities; the oracle theology also played a role in the production of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities.Chapter three is an exploration of the reason for the production of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities. Owing to the constant exchanges of the material culture of the six dynasties, ideas and cultures were ever more active, the anecdotes about the foreign land kept spreading at home and being mystified; the world view of Zou Yan's"nine large continents"was widely received, which provided theoretical support for the novelists'imagination; the men of letters absorbed others'strength, integrated them and explored the outside world with a stronger interest; compiling similar books was quite trendy during this period, novels of comprehensive anal of oddities being also emerged in this milieu. With the change of the mentality of the literary men and the idea of literature, writers pursued richness and sublimity; influenced by the impractical talks, men of letters also showed off their broad knowledge and cleverness, making it the capital of promoting to the office.Chapter four deals with the artistic features of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities. This kind of novels aim to present the broad knowledge in a genius way, and satisfy people's need to know the outside world; related with the aim of creation, the oddity of the novels may not as odd as that of the mystifying- religion novel or the novels of hunting the odds; for the narrative technique, the narration is simple, plotless, linear, and the materials are randomly arranged; it mainly describes things, that is, to record the features, shape, functions of the distant things, thus the language is not grand, even without literariness; its materials are sought and recorded from the old books.Chapter five expounds upon the influence of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities. This kind of novel has its own unique value as well, since the later novels basically followed the comprehensiveness and diversity of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities and also followed the writing model and content and style; in the later years, novels of comprehensiveness appeared, such as the most well-known, the narrative pattern of which derived from the"the transfer of the orientation"of the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities; the compilation of classified books(books compiled according to a certain criteria) become fashionable in the later dynasties, the perfection of which was the birth of the novel of"classified book type"; the novels of comprehensive anal of oddities developed a way of writing by the transfer of geographical locations , which was more obvious in the novels of Ming and Qing dynasties;this kind of novel offers motif, narrative paradigm and certain cultures for the later literature of various genres. The broad subjects and contents become the origin of encyclopedia.