The Study Of The Concept Fiction In The Tang And Its Rise

This dissertation takes the "Xiaoshuo"conept and its rise of the early Tang Dynasty as research object. It falls into three chapters. The first chapter studies the "Xiaoshuo"concept in the early Tang. The word "Xiaoshuo"was stated in three fields. Firstly it was presented in historians and academic works, especially in Liu Zhiji's Shi-tong. Secondly it was in some writers'stories, from Yin Yun of the Southern Dynasties to Liu Su and Duan Chengshi of the middle Tang who either named their books with "Xiaoshuo", or claimed their works "Xiaoshuo"in the prefaces. Thirdly it was also found in "Works Category"of Sui History and of the two Tang History. In such three fields, the Tang fiction had two tendencies. One was that the fiction was regarded as history, which led it to the dead end and made the Tang writers abandon the name "Xiaoshuo"in their fiction writings. The other was a variety of fiction, such as fiction of religion, misery and the supematural, folk art forms and so on, which offered a wide field for its rise. The second chapter discusses the relations between historical narration and the rise of fiction of the early Tang. The eight Histories of the early Tang, especially Jin History brought great advantages of historical narration to fiction. The Story of Ancient Mirror and The Legend of White Apes just adopted such a literary style. The four works by Zhang Yue during Xuanzong Emperor period showed that the legends in articles had surpassed historical narration. Zhang Zhuo's Chao-ye-jian-zai was originally jottings with unofficial history, but it also expressed the rise of fiction sense both in narrative tales and in skill. The third chapter deals with the fiction of religions and its rise in the early Tang, during which there was little creation in the writings of Taoism. Fiction of Buddism, represented by Tang Lin's Ming-bao-ji, reflected a new tendency in literary creation from three aspects as to depicting subjectivity of human life, fictionzlizing narrative essence and integrating plot construction, which promoted the rise of the Tang Dynasty. At last, the Suzong Emperor period, Niu Su's Ji-wen and Dai Fu's Guang-yi-ji integrated history, religion, misery and the supernatural into each other, so the narration of fiction got the over-all development. Shortly after that, during the Jianzhong period, fiction with mature formation, represented by emergence of legendary writings, obtained the large-scal rise.