Novels And The Great Tao

Novels,especially vernacular novels,always had a bad reputation in traditional China,which seemed to be trivial and were harmful to society and morality to orthodox scholar-officials.But since eighteen century,a number of literati novels,which are different from the past vernacular novels in forms of writing,spreading and accepting,have appeared in the Chinese novel history.Lu Xiong(??)'s Nuxian Waishi(??????),written in the early-Qing period,and Xia Jingqu(???)'s Yesou Puyan(??????),written in the mid-Qing period,are two outstanding works among these literati novels.Although these two books belong to the category of novel in style,the authors of them were following the current of thought and academic discourse at that time closely,and responded to the academic issues of their times in form of novel narrative.In other words,Nuxian Waishi and Yesou Puyan explore philosophical thought in form of vernacular novel,which reflect the transformation of Confucianism in their own times.It is well known that there was a "metaphysical crisis"during the Ming-Qing Transition,and the thought of application to practical statecraft became popular.Influenced by this current of thought,Lu Xiong rejected Song-Ming Confucianism,and thought that scholars in this period just discussed mind-nature and the way of heaven abstractly,which would understand the metaphysical reality only but can't put it into practice.As the Pu Xue(??)'s prosperity in the Qianlong period,scholars all devoted to historical semantics and evidential studies.But,due to lineage and region,Xia Jingqu believed in Cheng-zhu Confucianism,especially the official ideology represented by Li Guangdi.On the contrary,Xia had a negative attitude to Lu-Wang's school of Mind and considered it to be heresy,such as Buddhism and Taoism.Because of their different philosophical positions,Lu Xiong and Xia Jingqu proposed variant ideas in terms of Confucian Orthodoxy and Confucian Temple Canonization.Like Fei Mi(??),his contemporary,Lu Xiong disagreed with Song-Ming scholars' discourses on the genealogy of the sages.Unlike Song-Ming Scholars,Lu admired Zhang Liang and Zhuge Liang,but didn't evaluate Cheng-Zhu highly.Yuan Mei(??),Xia Jingqu's contemporary,completely denied Song-Ming scholars' theory of Confucian orthodoxy,yet Xia not only sympathized with Song-Ming scholars' analysis on Confucian orthodoxy,but also intend to inherit this genealogy consciously.About the problem of posthumous names in the Confucian Temple Canonization,Lu Xiong proposed to cancel Confucius'status of emperor.About the problem of the institution of ritual,Lu thought that it is inappropriate to adopt the rituals of emperor in the imperial college.As to who should be placed in the register of sacrifices in the Confucian Temple,Xia Jingqu proposed to remove Lu Jiuyuan(???)but to retain Zai Wo(??)and Ran You(??)who belong to the ten famous students of Confucius.The reason Lu Xiong and Xia Jingqu discussed academic issues such as Confucian orthodoxy and the rites of Confucian temple in the form of vernacular novel because they didn't just see their books as Bai-guan novels(????),but Zi-bu novels(????)which can contribute to the studies of Confucian classics and history.