Art Of The "Golden Lotus"

This dissertation is my third treatise on the famous Chinese classical novel -"The Golden Lotus (Jin Ping Mei)" after the book "New Interpretation of 'Jin Ping Mei'" (published by Hebei Education Press in Jan. 1999) and " the Key of Jin Ping Mei" (published by Social Sciences Press of China in Dec. 2002). The later two books focused on detailed textual research and did not touch the artistry of 'Jin Ping Mei'", while this dissertation systematically interprets the particular artistry of "Jin Ping Mei".The introduction of this dissertation briefly explained the reason of choosing this topic and the present situation of the research circle on Jin Ping Mei.The first chapter stressed on the novel's special way of mirroring the realism: reflecting the present times by describing the former times, and with a method similar to "news headline", without telling the details of the affairs. Such unique plot was unprecedented in the history of Chinese fiction.The second chapter mainly explored the novel's special artistry of characters designing: firstly, the writer chose 85 real people in Ming Dynasty to show the time when the story happened; and secondly, the writer tried to select those persons who had the same names but lived in either Song dynasty or Ming Dynasty, and he blended the conduct of different persons into one person.The third chapter and fourth chapter focused on the obvious textual characteristic of Jin Ping Mei. The writer made a lot use of the former dynasty's fiction and drama, and changed them into inseparable component of his novel, fulfilling the dream of "one fiction with different styles", which the novelists of Tang Dynasty wished to realize but failed.The fifth chapter studied the unique artistry of Jin Ping Mei that related the "worldly affairs" with "politics". To this end, the writer used two describing methods: firstly, as a "novel of worldly affairs", he chose ordinary people and common affairs from real life, giving a detailed description, which is the characteristic of "the novel of worldly affairs"; secondly, the writer used the idle chatters of "the ordinary people" to display the important incidents in Ming Dynasty, by the way of sublime words with profound meaning, similar to "news headline", which suits the "historical recounting method" of the style of Spring and Autumn Annals. In this unique and ingenious way, Jin Ping Mei integrates "family " with "politics" in perfect harmony. And such is the unique artistic technique of Jin Ping Mei.