"jin Ping Mei" And "genji" Character Image Comparison Research

"The Tale of Genji" is the first realistic fiction in the history of Japanese literature. Its appearance has produced a far-reaching effect to the Japanese novels, especially to the Monogatari literature. As the first realistic novel in China,"Golden Lotus" laid the foundation for further development of the realism creation. Both of the two fictions are not only skilled with realism, but also comparable, especially on the characters which are highly authentic and typical. At present the academic circle does not pay enough attention to the relation between these two novels, so there’s still much space on this issue.In this paper, we will start with the realism and the writing methods of characters from four aspects. On the psychological description,"The Tale of Genji" puts more emphasis than "Golden Lotus", however, on the portrait description, linguistic description and action description are just the reverse. First, on the psychological description,"Golden Lotus" uses much less depiction and the interior monologue than "The Tale of Genji". However, in the using of dream and illusion,"Golden Lotus" has reached the consciously stage while "The Tale of Genji" still stays in spontaneous stage. Second, on the portrait description,"Golden Lotus" is more detailed on focusing on features when "The Tale of Genji" presents impressionistic. And on the using of side description as well as the repetition,"The Tale of Genji" is more than "Golden Lotus". Meanwhile, both of the novels have shortcomings of typing trait and conceptualization. Third, on the linguistic description,"Golden Lotus" embodies high degree of individuality and vulgar of the character while "The Tale of Genji" is more plain. The dialogue is more tense and the interior monologue is insufficiently for the former while the latter is just the opposite. Fourth, on the action description,"Golden Lotus" presents featuring, diversity and contrasting while "The Tale of Genji" is impressionistic, extensive and gentle. In the last chapter we’ll comb context of the development of realistic literature and the position of the two books in China and Japan. In the meantime, this paper also makes an analysis on the causes that why are "Golden Lotus" more developed than "The Tale of Genji" from the respects of the background and literary thought trends.