"Jin Ping Mei" "language-map" Intertextual Research

Fictions in Ming and Qing Dynasties are full of illustrations, almost every book has illustrations. Without exception, there are illustrations among the four famous classics, and The Golden Lotus, which is one of The Four Masterpieces of Ming Dynasty, also has illustrated edition. Actually, based on the text of The Golden Lotus, many pictures painted by a batch of professional painters sprung up from Qing Dynasty till now. The major content of these pictures are from the plot or figure in The Golden Lotus. Otherwise, they are superior to the illustrations of Ming and Qing Dynasties both in composition of the picture and the painting level. So, although these pictures are not in the same carrier with the text of the fiction, they also should be regard as the illustrations of The Golden Lotus. This is similar to the pictures on the masonry of Han dynasty, which are impossible to share the same carrier with the text of fiction, but they are also treated as illustrations in the edition of the story. The illustrations are created by the text, and it is the imitation to the language, moreover, language is the supplement and explanation to the image. They reference to each other, coordinate with each other, and impact on each other. Therefore, they have a mutual relationship called "image-language".This thesis takes the illustrated editions of The Golden Lotus in Ming and Qing Dynasties and some representative pictures from Qing Dynasty till the middle of 20th century as research objects. It discusses the relation between the form of the illustration and image of the text in different periods, and then teases the developing orbit of the illustrations of The Golden Lotus from Ming until the middle of the 20th century.Except introduction, the thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter defines the concept of illustrations of novels at first, and then searches the origin of the illustrations of Chinese Ancient Novels, and ravels out its development. The second chapter mainly researches the illustrations of The Golden Lotus in Ming and Qing Dynasties, analyzing the different illustrated editions of this novel, and comparing them with illustrations of other novels in the same period. It is considered that the illustration forms of The Golden Lotus are not very diverse by comparing with the illustrations of other novels in this period, and then researches the causes of this phenomenon. At the same time, this thesis has a specific explanation to the relationship between the illustration and text of The Golden Lotus according to the "image-language" theory. And the last chapter has a deep investigation into some pictures which aren't in the same carrier with the text of The Golden Lotus but based on its story and figure, generalizing the two features of the pictures of The Golden Lotus in this period-the professionalization of the creating subject and the diversification of the illustration forms. Based on it, this thesis recitals the colorful pictures, comic strips, and figure paintings of The Golden Lotus combining the concrete works in this period, and has a full explanation based on "image-text" theory.