A Research On Social Novels Of Late-Qing Dynasty

Social novels of Late-Qing have reached to the greatness both in its production and achievements,however,there are fairly obvious discrepancy among many works.Seeing these works in its entirety as one type of novel is unable to reflect precisely the true visage of Late-Qing social novels.By analyzing how the concept of "social novel" was used in the context of late-Qing Dynasty and the difference between the representative works of "social novels",this dissertation tries to regard "social novel"as a kind of literature trend in response to "Society-reforming" spirit and corresponding thoughts,and further classifies the works in this trend into four types:political novels,exposing novels,realistic novels and history-like novels.This dissertation examines their literary lineage,development motivation,main characteristics and evolutionary changes,and sketches out the main features and development process of these four types of novels.At the same time,this dissertation also pays attention to the innovation factors that are presented in the development process and the role of the factors played in the modern transformation of the novel modernization.The structure of this dissertation is as follows:The introduction mainly discusses the research value of the social novels in the late-Qing Dynasty,reviews the current research results,and explains the research methodology of this dissertation.The first chapter mainly analyzes the social novels.It tries to trace the transformation and development of the meaning of "shehui"(society)in the late-Qing Dynasty,and to analyze the modern political ideas it contains.This chapter also discusses the theory and practice of the classification of the novel at that time,analyzes how the people of that time view social novels and how they use this term.Through the comparison of several representative works and the obvious difference between the social novels,this chapter has proved the rationality that social novels are classified as a kind of literary trend.Starting from the meaning of "shehui"(social)and the actual situation of the novels,this chapter analyzes the possible four types of social novels.The second chapter focuses on the political novels.This chapter expounds the important influence of the Chinese educational tradition on the revolutionary advocacy of the novel writing circle,and analyzes the variation of the traditional connotation of the educational tradition in the late-Qing Dynasty.This chapter also discusses the general situation of political novels from discovery to prosperity,and explores the reasons for the rise and fall of political novels.Through the analysis of the theme of political novels,this chapter discovers how political thought affects the novel creation and the romantic features of these themes.Chapter 3 focuses on the exposing novels.This chapter analyzes the reasons why the exposing novels are popular from the collapse of political authority and the marketization of novels publication.This chapter discusses the theme of the exposing novel,the characteristics of the subject matter,analyzes the meaning of the"revealing" skill.This chapter also discusses the "comical" aesthetic style of the exposing novels,analyzing that this "carnivalization" narrative does not have much modernity.Chapter 4 discusses the realistic novels.This chapter analyzes the causes of the prosperity of the realistic novels from the aspects of realism literary tradition,thoughts of ruling the country of the late-Qing dynasty,the promotion of the novel revolution,and the differences between the realistic novels and the political novels and the exposing novels in the subject matter,content and emotion.This chapter also explores the influence of the realistic novels on the prosperity of short stories of the late-Qing dynasty and analyzes the reasons and characteristics of the short stories'first making the modern transformation.This chapter further discusses the "lyrical"character of the realistic novels,including the characteristics of emotion,the form of expression,and the analysis of the role of "lyricism" in promoting the novel from "for society" to "for life".Chapter 5 focuses on the discussion of history-like novels.This chapter analyzes the difference between the history-like novels and the traditional historical novels,analyzes the linear view of history and the open view of history,and the influence on the narrative techniques and styles of the novels.This chapter also discusses the difference between history-like novels and other social novels from the perspective of custom history and cultural history,and discusses the typical narrative structure of history-like novels,analyzes the difference between history-like novels and romance novels,discusses how social romance novels should be classified and the development of this type of novels in the Period of the Republic of China.The conclusion discusses the development process of the social novel from the dimensions of politics,commerce and art,and the internal falls and rises of the social novel.The appendix includes the related chronicles of social novels,which are closely related to the writing of this dissertation.In addition,there are rare novel works list that are collected by the author in the access to the original resources,most of which are not listed by other novel reference books.