A Study On The Comment And Annotation Of The Tang Legend In The Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty is an era when many Tang Legend works are compiled and copied,especially in the middle and the late phase of the Ming Dynasty. During that time, novelcomment was becoming more and more popular, and therefore gradually spread to the realm ofthe ancient novels, including the Tang Legend. As a result, annotated editions of Tang Legendnovels began to appear. According to our survey, there are ten categories of annotated TangLegend in the Ming Dynasty and over twenty annotators. There is no research work on thecomment and annotation of the Tang Legend in the Ming Dynasty by the time this paper iswritten. The research work in this paper is a pilot study on the comment and annotation of theTang Legend in the Ming Dynasty based on a collection of annotated Tang Legend works.This paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces annotated Tang Legendworks in Ming Dynasty and related research work. The second chapter gives an analysis on thereason why Tang Legend annotation became so popular in the Ming Dynasty. The third chapteranalyses annotated Tang Legend works from three perspectives: editions, annotators and famousnovels. The forth chapter performs a delicate textual analysis and makes categorization andconclusion based on three viewpoints: art, thinking and the novel principle. The fifth chapterdiscusses the value and importance of annotated Tang Legend works and concludes this paper.