The Late Ming Dynasty "Shi Shuo"Type Novels Research

Shi Shuo Xin Yu, written by Liu yiqing in the Southern Dynasties, is the masterpiece of all the tales of human in ancient China, the categorization of its compiling style, the significance of its narrative, and the briefness of its language style did a far-reaching impact on the later generations. There were many literature works which are similar in the style and editing, they are named the "shishuo type " novel.The development reached a peak after The Year of Wanli, until the late Ming Dynasty, not just the quantity grew, the content and style kept making breakthroughs, which broadened the future of the "shishuo type" novel. However, the "shishuo type" novel of the late Ming Dynasty didn’t cause much concern in the educational circles, the research on it remains on presenting the content of the literary works, summarizing the reason of its prosperity. This article uses11existing "shishuo type" novels as the research object, deeply analyzes the content and style, explores their features and the unique value of them.There are6parts of this article:The introduction identified the definition of the "shishuo type" novel and presented the research status; The overview of its developmental stage, works and the writer’s basic information is given in Chapter1. In Chapter2, there are analysis on the content feature of the "shishuo type" novel, the source and modification of the materials; In Chapter3, there are discussions about the editor motivation, and analysis on the succession and innovation of the category setting of the "shishuo type" novel. Then I present the record of this type of novel in the mainly bibliography of both Ming and Qing Dynasty, the evaluation from the scholars in Ming and Qing Dynasty, as well as its influence in Qing Dynasty. In the conclusion, I mainly generalize the value of the "shishuo type novel" of the late Ming Dynasty.