Research On Judgment In The Ming Dynasty's Detective Novels

Legal case fictions and court verdict belong to different literary style categories and have their own evolution. But the similarity including topic conception and narration characteristic leads to a combination in Tang Dynasty. Eventually this combination becomes fixed and derives a new kind of fiction, called Shupanti legal case fiction. The court verdict in legal case fictions of Ming Dynasty which are content rich and numerous derive from legal case fiction album and legal case stories in simulating vernacular novels, especially Sanyan and Erpai. Influenced by real judicial environment in Ming Dynasty, the creation of court verdict is based on the features of values, structure and expression in practical court verdict.The court verdict in legal case fictions of Ming Dynasty are used as legal documents of virtual cases in trial literature. The court verdict not only have the key function of organizing plots and ending stories, but also have moralization function of highlighting ethical value. Compared with practical court verdict, because of the difference in language environment and using means, the court verdict in legal case fictions of Ming Dynasty have more significant tendency of liberalization. Being a kind of artistic method, the court verdict review the social condition of special crowd in Ming Dynasty. Moreover, they reflect expectancy of the people living in the bottom to corrupt officials and express the idea of karma and the cause-and-effect transmigration concept.