Tea Culture's Esthetic Value In The Ming And Qing Dynasties Novels

Tea culture accounts for a considerable proportion and gives its wide coverage in the Ming and Qing Dynasties vernacular novels, which plays a vital function for the achievement of the novels and Hong Lou Meng is the most representative among them. The description of tea culture in Hong Lou Meng is very rich and varied, including profound tea customs, tea ceremony, lively tea matter. The description of tea culture embodies high esthetic value in the novel, and which promotes development of plot, sublimates the theme of fiction and adds luster to characters' mold. This paper is trying to discusse tea culture's aesthetic value in vernacular novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties through taking Hong Lou Meng as a case. The full text is divided into five chapters: chapter I analyses the description of tea matter in the novel from three aspects which are tea customs, tea ceremony and tea treatment; Chapters II and III respectively elaborate the function of the description of tea matter for the embodiment of themes and the shaping of characters; chapter IV analyses social background and discusses readers' acceptance of tea culture; chapter V comparatively analyses the inheritance of description of tea culture through relating Jin Ping Mei and Jing Hua Yuan as well as other novels. The author hopes to expand the field and perspective of the study on tea culture by this paper and to attract researchers' attention to tea culture in vernacular novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties.