On The Thought And Character Of Jin Sheng - Tan's Novel The Late Ming Dynasty Literature Theory

Jinshengtan was one of the most famous authority critics on Chinese ancient novels,and was also a controversial figure. His criticism on the novel made the portraying of the figures, characters as the core, referring to nearly all the aspects of novel art, and posed many new viewpoints which suited to the literature characters of the novel art itself. The character theory is the essence of all his theories, possessing high-priced aesthetics value. This thesis starts from the point that is the relation between the literature thoughts and Jinshengtan's theory on novel character, and makes new probing into the aesthetics value of this theory. This thesis contains fourparts: background standpoint; source theory;ontology and the finishing part.In the first part " background standpoint" ,it mainly investigates the rising and development of literature thoughts in later Ming Dynasty and its catalysis on the emergence of Jinshengtan's novel character theory. Breeded by the special politics, economy and culture in later Ming Dynasty, the literature thoughts with its distinct anti-tradition posture, publicized the individuality consciousness and subject consciousness. Their ideological trend, especially Lizhi's literature concept directly catalysised the posing of Jinshengtan's novel character theory."Source theory" starts from the vertical direction, and makes a panoramic examination on the development and trend transformation of Chinese classical narration literature, especially expounds the source of novel criticism and the typical criticism tradition of novel figure portraying theory, so as to grasp the value and significance of Jinshengtan's character theory distinctly and accurately in the historical regular transformation.The theory is expanded from both vertical and horizontal directions, and the third part "ontology" concentrates to probe into the aesthetics value of Jinshengtan's novel character theory. Following the previous way of the literature thoughts in later Ming Dynasty which publicized individualities, Jinshengtan broke through the typical criticism on novel figure portraying, and transited to face the character theory. Attaching importance to the characters of novel figures, it made the character portraying as the core of novel art, probing into the authentication and complexity of character broadly and making meticulous expounding on many art elements of novels, these are all its main aesthetics values. Being stimulated by the subject consciousness which was proposed by the literature thoughts in later Ming Dynasty, with the comparison between Jinshengtan's novel character theory and Higle's "idealism character theory", embodies attaching importance to and grasp the subject of aesthetic conceptions, this is the other important aesthetics value of his theory.Established on the foundation of its aesthetics value, the finishing part summarizes Jinshengtan's outstanding position and the far-reading influence of his character theory on the criticism history of classical novel theory, and the correct attitude that we should adopt.