The "Love" And "Doctrines" Within Human Feelings Novels In The Late Ming And Early Qing Dynasties

The appearance of “The Golden Lotus”, created a trend of writing human feelingsnovels. Different from the past novels, which emphasized on grand narrativeselements like gods and spirits, history and heroic legends; human feelings novelscentered on affairs of family and marriage, alley trivia which seemed insignificant.Starting from the Wei and Jin dynasty, novels involved human feelings began toemerge. Some chapters of legends of the tang dynasty basically had the characteristicsof human feelings novels. In the song dynasty,“ShiRen” novels began to flourish, thetheme of this kind of novels were either about men and women’s love or concernedwith stories of gaining fame and fortune, widely reflected the social life. Besides, thiskind of novels directly influenced the writing of human feelings novel like “TheGolden Lotus”. In the late Ming dynasty, people tended to be more open-minded, withit brought the change of social morals, which diverted from the compliance with“doctrines” to assertion of “love”. At the same time, the creation of human feelingsnovels reached the top, and some of them began to go overboard for sexualsatisfaction and sexual adoration, coupling with the advocacy of advanced concept onlove, marriage. This phenomenon continued until the late Ming and early Qingdynasty. With the Qing dynasty replacing the Ming dynasty, combined thedominator’s reconstruction on “doctrines” with the literati’s reflections on thedegenerated social morals, human feelings novel tended to be conservative on thewriting of personal sexual desires, however, there are still some novels, which alsoknown as erotic novels, daring to excessively conduct sexual depiction.How to deal with the relationship between “doctrines” and “love” can reflecthuman feelings novels’ values.“Love”, in the broad sense, refers to interpersonalemotions, feelings between male and female, it also has something to do with “sex”and “desire”. And “doctrines”, in general speaking, refers to social ethics and norms.This dissertation uses the human feelings novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties asobjects of analysis and it mainly contains four chapters. The first chapter is to discussthe evolution of human feelings novels, explain the concept and characteristic of “love” and “doctrines”, then present the “love” and “doctrines” in different periodswith different social backgrounds. The second chapter is to explain the “love” and“doctrines” within realistic novels in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, take“The Legendary of waking marriage”“LinLanXiang”“XingShiYan”“ZuiXingShi”for example. These novels, on one hand, vividly depict the corrupted feudal socialmorals, on the other hand, appeal for the orthodox Confucian order. The third chaptertakes erotic novels as a subject. Erotic novels are not much involved with the valueand depiction of “love” and “doctrines”, the main characteristic of them is to takesexual indulgence as “love”,“doctrines” is a camouflage for carnal descriptions oferotic novels. Erotic novels are full of male-centered consciousness, so they treat menand women characters with double standards of “love” and “doctrines”. The finalchapter is committed to analyzing the “love” and “doctrines” within the novel ofgifted scholars and beautiful ladies in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Thenovels of gifted scholars and beautiful ladies concentrate on stories of love andmarriage, supplemented by stories of meeting and department, making trouble of vilecharacters. Some of them advocate the advanced concept of love and marriage, andothers pay attention to propagating the Confucian ethical code.