Research On The "West Lake Novels"

West Lake Novels, named after a geographical location, has been a unique genre of fiction novels on Chinese fiction history. In this study, we discussed the West Lake Novels as the novels which satisfy the following criteria:the main stories took place in the neighborhood of West Lake or Hangzhou; there were scenes of West Lake appeared; the novel was written in vernacular Chinese. Among them, vernacular short novels were mainly discussed.The paper started by interpreting the relationship between Hangzhou (West Lake) and West Lake novels by means of dissecting the contemporary political, economic and cultural environment.It then decomposed the Image of West Lake, which was differenced from the geographical meaning of Hangzhou (West Lake) in terms of the legends that has been passing on among the citizens in Hangzhou, the novelists’ portray of local customs, the reflection of the local commercial and cultural level, as well as the highlights of humanity through the appreciation of the picturesque landscapes over the West Lake.The third chapter of the study focused on discussion of the essential factors that consists of the image of West Lake using the symbolic landscapes to identify the narrative and cultural significance of the West Lake and then took a another step by exploring the romantic, maudlin and materialistic implication of the image of West Lake.The study drawn the curtain by summarized the historical significance of the West Lake Novels, the influences on later literatures and its limitations.