Picture And Text-Rong Yutang’s Version And Yuan Wuya’s Version "the Story By The Water Margin" Illustrations Study

Chinese woodcut has reached its pinnacle in the Wanli Period (1573A.D-1620A.D) ofthe Ming dynasty, the representatives of which are the illustrations from Li Zhuowu’sComments on Outlaws of the Marsh (Rong Yutang’s version) and Li Zhuowu’s Comments onOutlaws of the Marsh (Yuan Wuya’s version), which have won high reputation. Based on therelationship between the illustrations and the text, this paper has investigated the relationshipbetween the two versions’ illustrations, analyzed their similarities and differences, andevaluated their artistic and cognitive values.This paper consists of five parts.The introduction part gives an overview of the history of Chinese ancient woodcut artand the artistic status of the woodcut of Outlaws of the Marsh. On the basis of previousresearch on the illustrations in the Li Zhuowu’s Comments on Outlaws of the Marsh (RongYutang’s version and Yuan Wuya’s version), this part also puts forward the significance,research objects, and research methodology of this study.The first chapter offers an account of the woodcut format characteristics of Rong’sversion and Yuan’s version as well as the relationship between the Yuan’s version and DiYuren’s version.The second chapter makes contrastive analyses on the woodcut of Rong Yutang’s versionand Yuan Wuya’s version. On the basis of defining the illustrations of the same scene, thischapter classifies the illustrations into two types: illustrations of the same scene in the sameepisode and illustrations of different scenes in the same episode. The first type usuallyincludes the illustrations which describe the key and core contents, show the characteristics ofleading characters in the novel, or demonstrate the theme development of the novel. Thesecond type consists of illustrations of describing different plots or different developmentstages of the same plot. The illustrations in the Yuan’s version tend to focus on the character,while the illustrations in the Rong’s version center on the episode titles and fail to offer adetailed description of the episode’s main content. This difference directly leads to distinctillustration styles of the two versions.The third chapter makes an analysis on the painter’s creativity in composing theillustrations. The illustrations have difficulties in demonstrating the coherence, continuity, and completeness of the novel text. To compensate for this drawback, the painter fathoms the textcontents, breaks the time&space limits and adopts compound illustration-compositionmethod to describe the novel plots, or tries to encompass more complete contents by changingthe point of view, which all embodies the painter’s creativity.The fourth chapter discusses the artistic values of the illustrations in the two versions.Based on the aesthetic imagery embodied by the illustrations, this chapter yields a detailedanalysis on the traditional philosophical ideas and precious cognitive values reflected by theillustrations.