| Yan Song was the longest cabinet assistant in Jiajing period in Ming Dynasty,having a great impact on the political and social development.In history,Yan Song was stained in the official circle but there was no lack of redeeming features outside the political circle.There were different opinions on Yan Song in Ming and Qing dynasties,and the image of Yan Song in novels was constantly adjusted with the cognition and attitude of later generations.The evolution degree and speed of Yan Song’s image were not balanced between classical novel system and vernacular novel system in Ming and Qing Dynasties.Yan Song in the classical novels of Ming Dynasty was relatively close to the historical reality.Writers regarded Yan Song as a powerful official,and recorded the stories of Yan Song from various aspects with an objective attitude,which made up the historical fault.The classical novels of the Qing Dynasty inherited the way of depicting Yan Song in the classical novels of the Ming Dynasty,and tried to take history as the basis.However,the concise and incomplete historical materials left classical novel writers of the Qing Dynasty much room,so that the image of Yan Song changed and gradually deviated from the historical reality.The vernacular novels of Ming Dynasty were quite realistic,but the choice of material focuses on Yan Song’s evil deeds in the political field,which made Yan Song appear as a treacherous court official at the beginning.The vernacular novels of the Qing Dynasty followed the basic tone of the vernacular novels of the Ming Dynasty,and continued to depict Yan Song as a treacherous court official,and processed in different degrees according to the needs of writing,so that Yan Song in the vernacular novels of the Qing Dynasty showed different aspects under the overall image of "treacherous court official ".The novel and drama have the same origin and purportion.During the evolution of Yan Song’s literary image,the novel and drama often permeated each other intertextually,which contributed to the formation of Yan Song’s treacherous court official image in literature.There were many factors that promoted the transformation of Yan Song’s image from the powerful official to the treacherous official in Ming and Qing novels.The first one was time distance.The authors in different times were faced with two differences in building the image of Yan Song,one of which is the richness of the source material and the other one was the attention of society to the real image of Yan Song.The second factor was the vicissitude of Social Psychology.From the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty,the complicated and changeable situation caused different social psychology,which influenced the writers of different periods to pay attention to the different aspects of Yan Song.The last factor was the stylistic transformation.There were differences between the authors of classical novel and vernacular novel in creaive intention and aesthetic pursuit.In the process of stylistic transformation,Yan Song’s stories were rewritten again and again,and his image also changed to meet the needs of different literary form. |
