Research On The "Travel Body" Novels In The Ming And Qing Dynasties

The "travel body" novel is a special style of the system of travel literature. China has along history in the travel literature, which emergence and development has a closerelationship with the going on a journey and travel of Chinese ancient people who wouldwrite down their thoughts and feelings when they come back, and then travel literature comeinto being. The "travel body" travel is the combination of the travel notes prose and the fictionnovel. Unlike travel notes proses which emphasize records, the "travel body" novels don’tavoid inventing which exists not only in travel experiences, but sometimes in time and figures.In the plot，it introduce romance instead of recording. The "travel body" novels in the Mingand Qing Dynasties may generally be divided into four major types which include “goingthrough difficulties to propagandize for religion”,“conquer over travel”,“tourism byscholars” and “puzzling over on the journey”. Its representative works are Journey to theWest, Eunuch Sanbao ‘s Journey To The Western Ocean, The Marriage of Flowers in theMirror and The travels of Lao Can.Compared with other novel categories, the "travel body"novel have three distinctive literary style characteristics: The majority of the details amongtext take place in the travel; A great deal of description of the natural environment and thehumanities; The peregrination movements of the host in text arouses the development ofdetails. Unlike the travel notes prose concern landscape, the "travel body" novel, especially inthe Ming and Qing Dynasties, pay more attention to human life in the world. The author hasintegrated his/her deep experience in the social life into the text, and increased criticism onsocial custom. In the narrative, the "travel body" novels in the Ming and Qing Dynastiesgenerally interspersed with the use of the restricted perspective and the omniscientperspective. The recounts mode and recounts style in the "travel body" novels in the Ming andQing Dynasties present two different inclination to aesthetic appreciation, one is theantinomy-conflict style, the other is close to observing style.