Late Qing Dynasty Classical Chinese Novel History

The thesis discusses the history of the classical Chinese novels at the turn fromQing dynasty to the Republic of China. In addition to the preface, the thesis includesfour chapters. In the preface, the basic development of the classical Chinese novels atthat time is described in tables, and the history of research about those novels is alsoanalyzed.The first chapter discusses the living space of the classical Chinese novels at thattime. In late Qing dynasty, the movement of vernacular literature initiated by LiangQichao and other people made the classical Chinese novels in a low tide. However,the school that advocated protecting the quintessence of Chinese culture strengthenedthe traditional aesthetic conceptions in which only the classical Chinese was regardedas a beautiful written language. And in the first years of ROC, the classical Chinesenovels achieved huge development due to some concrete social factors.The second chapter discusses the classical Chinese novels of traditional style at theturn from Qing dynasty to ROC. The classical Chinese novels of traditional style arein general divided into two kinds: tales of the marvelous and pen jottings At that time,due to the movement of anti-superstition, the tales of the marvelous about gods andspirits declined, of course, some people still liked to write this kind of tales, becausethe images of gods and spirits had eternal charm. Of those authors, Linshu was arepresentative figure. Different from the wane of the tales of gods and spirits, the talesabout love had a huge development, which could be divided into two sorts: oneinherited the tradition of short stories of the Tang-Song period, and the otherembodied strong flavor of times. There were many tales of heroes at that time. JiangShanyuan was a famous author who was good at writing tales of heroes, and hisworks inherited the style of Record of the Historian. The chapter also discusses theconcept about pen jottings and the creation of pen jottings at that time.The third chapter discusses the classical Chinese novels of modern style at the turnfrom Qing dynasty to ROC. According to the theme, these novels are divided intothree sorts: social novels, sentimental novels and autobiography novels. One part ofthe social novels began to use techniques of realistic literature, and some of themachieved some characteristics of modern short stories. The other part still used imagesof super-reality like traditional social novels, but the images used were already 4different from traditional ones. At the time, lots of sentimental novels learned to usesome new factors in narrative techniques; more important, some sentimental novelsbegan to concentrate on common and trivial life rather than romantic life.Autobiography novels resulted from classical essay of China, and marked the maturity of the autobiography novels.The last chapter discusses the factors that led to the end of the classical Chinesenovels and the legacy inherited by modern novels.