Ancient Fictions And Entertainment Culture

Entertainment was indispensable to the life of ancient people, through leisure share they got contented in psychological and mental needs. Entertainment was originated from social practice, and constantly improved in the interaction with other social factors to form a cultural phenomenon, i.e., entertainment culture. With historical accumulation and going through different times and societies' evolution, entertainment culture formed its own and coherent character and value orientation. The traditional entertainment culture of China is rich and colorful, as recorded in historical documents and notes at different times. However, those records are of simple and abstract description, from which we cannot really and overall experience its pleasure. How to vividly and concretely reflect the ancient people's entertainment life is the task borne by ancient fiction. Fiction was wrote originally for recreation and had entertainment function in respect to public usage, and the ancient entertainment life reflected in fiction, in a sense, influenced the fiction's value orientation and artistic representation. Therefore, fiction and entertainment were closely related to each other. In ancient times, a certain prejudice was attached to entertainment and fiction which represents such entertainment, it is hard for people to attach importance to fiction's entertainment function, and less people studied specially the entertainment function involved in fiction, therefore, this Dissertation's study on ancient fiction and entertainment culture, to a extend, is necessary and feasible.This Dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part is to depict ancient fiction's entertainment function, the second is a research and demonstration of entertainment culture in ancient fiction. The first part consists of five chapters, which analyzes the entertainment function of so-called early fiction in the pre-Qin and Han period. According to the characters and consecutions of ancient fiction's evolution and based on the division of literary forms of fiction into classical Chinese in colloquial Chinese, this Part respectively dissertates the evolution of ancient fiction's entertainment function, discusses the representing ways of fiction's entertainment function, and studies the acceptance effect from fiction's entertainment function. The second part consists of four chapters. The traditional culture, according to its function and nature, is divided into four types including vaudevilles, games for developing intelligence, leisure activities without strong body movements like fishing, flower appreciating, folk-custom recreation etc., and those representative traditional entertainment activities such as vaudevilles, wording games, chess culture, festival entertainment etc. which are closely related to fiction, are respectively chosen, to research the evolution of traditional entertainment culture through fiction, clarify the concrete representation of entertainment in ancient fiction, analyze the function and role of entertainment culture in ancient fiction, and probe into the influence of ancient fiction on entertainment culture.Fiction, similar to other literary patterns, evolved from primary to senior. The pre-Qin and Han period saw the germination and primary development of ancient fiction, some works with primary fiction quality occurred, which are generally called early fictions. At this period, fiction had not been independent in literary form yet, and was subject to historical biography, that's to say, writers wrote fictions always according to the principle of "real record", which means no entertainment function was consciously attached to fiction. However, fiction at that time was also influenced by allegories carried in classical works and stories popular in the folk, their records of anecdotes seemed to cater to the people's curiosity, so they objectively had the effects of entertaining the people.The Period of the Wei-Jin and Southern-Northern Dynasties was a "conscious times of culture" and was also the period of ancient fiction's forming. At this period, the entertainment functions in fiction presented in different characteristics. In the Tang Dynasty, writers consciously wrote fictions, broke through the impact and restriction of historical biography, enforced fiction's fictiveness and enriched its contents, and the entertainment functions in fiction presented in new characteristic. After the Song Dynasty, fiction in classical Chinese, with the transverse influence of talking art, could combine with the one in colloquial Chinese, so its entertainment function might satisfy the people widely. To the end of the Ming Dynasty and beginning of the Qing Dynasty, with the birth of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, fiction in classical Chinese presented a characteristic to suit both refined and popular tastes.From the Tang Dynasty or so, a new form occurred in the creation field of fiction, i.e., fiction in colloquial Chinese. The fiction in colloquial Chinese at this period transferred from the circle of literati to common people, and showed, in respect of its taste, in difference with fiction in classical Chinese at its beginning. In the Song and Yuan Dynasties, talking arts and talking-singing arts became prosperous increasingly and scripts for story-telling also became more and more, they got away from the literary creating tradition in "righteous" principle and told ancient and modern stories and common people's life. Their contents' becoming common and language's becoming oral, also facilitated the entertainment function of fictions in colloquial Chinese becoming popular. The Ming and Qing Dynasties saw the prosperity in fiction history. Fiction broke formally the monopolization of classical poetries and essays, and became the "culture of a generation", the entertainment function of fiction in colloquial Chinese drove to an advanced phase.Fiction is a literary pattern emphasizing on portraying figure images and telling story plots, its entertainment function is embodied from the figure images portrayed and story plots told in works, and literary language is the direct carrier for showing this function. In a fiction, with humorous language art and in unique and interesting story plot, the writer created amused figure images to show ancient fiction's entertainment function. Since fiction has entertainment function and becomes the people's choice for leisure, it's sure for readers to get some psychological feelings in reading, which makes people pleasured, and objectively leads to a series of acceptance effects. The relatively obvious effects are to facilitate the punctuation and annotation on fiction becoming popularized, accelerate fiction's spread and enhance the communication and mutual improving between fiction and other entertainment forms.Entertainment is a cultural phenomenon closely related to human beings. Though it is for leisure, the people who are engaged in entertainment activities always throw in their subjective spirit and value orientation, therefore it has an important cultural accumulation. Ancient documents keep much more records of entertainment activities, which reflect the cultural features at different periods. Fictionists are also interested in taking them as describing objects, and endowed them unique representing function in their works.The visualizing in rich and colorful fictions in ancient China shows us a flourishing scene of ancient entertainment life, focally reflects the local conditions and customs as well as the people life and entertainment interests at different periods, also well shows the times' atmosphere, which makes a typical environment with unique features and national interests for the activities in fiction, thereby makes a cubic and real humane surroundings in compliance with figure characters. Entertainment activity is also endowed with aesthetic ideal. Each matter has its value function, the value of entertainment activity depends on that if it has essential features of entertainment, if it's in favor of people's health and noble interests. The entertainment activity in ancient fiction brings strong aesthetic feelings to readers.Entertainment is powerfully attractive to all kinds of people in ancient society, however, since the people's status, position, age, sex, economic condition, interest etc. are different, styles and features of their entertainment would be greatly different. Entertainment is also an activity appealing to feelings, it is sometimes non-utilitarian and super-realistic, which is in compliance with the national mentality of Chinese. Chinese is rich of the sense of social responsibility and justice, and embodies a social awareness in entertainment activity. Therefore, in ancient fictions, writers always made use of entertainment activity to portray figure character and fortune and showed figure's feeling or mentality. The ideal figures in Chinese culture are tolerant and pursue for soul freedom, that decides the people's attitude towards entertainment, i.e., idealized. Writers made use of entertainment activity to show unique national psychology and specific social mentality.Entertainment activity is also penetrated with propriety factors. In the feudal society of China, the ruling class laid particular stress on the political value of entertainment activity, and judged the value of entertainment activity with propriety principle. As reflected in fiction, writer always took entertainment activity as an object of reflection and study, for discussing political affairs and social ethos in an allegorical way, expressing their individual feelings and willing, the description implies their strong awareness of moral judgment and cultural criticism, ideal and value view.Traditional entertainment culture also impacts greatly the present fiction creation. In the mechanism of market-oriented economy, literary works are commercialized after entering the market. Under the competition mechanism of market-oriented economy, the busy people need rest and much more leisure and amusing literary works in leisure time, so writers cudgel their brains for enhancing fiction's entertainment function, that promotes swordsmen fictions of Hong Kong and Taiwan very popular and occupying rapidly the mainland of China. The present fiction also absorbs the factors of entertainment, in which the function and rule of entertainment become remarkable increasingly.With the rising of cultural industry and the promoting of appraisal on intangible cultural heritage of the world, the value of traditional culture re-arouses the people's concern. Especially, entertainment culture just caters for the consuming mass' demands for amusing and leisure, and forms a new tide of pursuing traditional entertainment. However, in modern social life, the traditional entertainment will be faced to all challenges of new-rising entertainment cultures. We shall carefully reflect the renaissance of traditional entertainment culture and enhance the efficient combination between protection and usage to keep the traditional entertainment culture of our nation left in the people's heart.