Research On Merchant Theme Novels Of Tang Dynasty And Five Dynasties

Under the influence of traditional physiocracy and morality, the social position of merchants was very inferior. Before Tang Dynasty, the merchants rarely appeared in literature. Moreover, the merchant characters were faint in them. Merchant theme novel of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties was conceptually the first to reflect the merchant's life in the history of Chinese novels. By portraying a batch of fresh and lively merchant characters, they contributed to the foundation of the merchant theme novels. But due to historical and political reasons, merchant theme novels of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties wasn't attached much by people, the research achievement about it, from the view of literature, was little. Therefore, this field deserves quite big space and value to research.To be the sprout of merchant theme novels of Chinese history, the merchant theme novels of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties has their own distinguishing feature in content. Portraying the live condition about merchants objectively for the first time, and putting to use the magic skill to make up a symbolic and illusory world, drawing power from the gods and spirits to take on the duty to defend the commercial order in the human world, they described a lot of foreign merchants that had outstanding discernment to distinguish jewelry concretely and lively. It is more remarkable that a lot of new and developing merchants giving off radiance of human nature appeared in the novels. As a merchant, they were proficient in business and observed the manage norms, such as: honest, keep promises, fair; as a society member, they usually possessed excellent accomplishment and presented moralistic and helpful; as an individual, they bore admiring wealth and sufficient capital as well as free space to choose the way of life they looked for. These merchant characters had a large amount in the novels of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties rather than appear in the former literature .This can be considered as a breakthrough on figure painting in literature, whose root was due to the fact that the fast developed economy and the transform of value conception.Most of the merchant theme novels of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties were produced by famous writers, so their artistic accomplishment was very outstanding. The novels had great originality in such aspects as material selection, figure painting, composition arrangement and artistic skill. They had attractive worth for appreciation and provided necessary reference and inspiration about how to reflect merchants'life and mold them for novels after Tang Dynasty. Meanwhile, the novels reflected the understanding and consideration about merchants and business of that society, revealed specific appearance of commercial field, and provided important proof for posterity to study the history of commerce. As a valuable inheritance in our novel treasury, it deserves more attention from us.