Novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Source: cultural-china.com

The Ming and Qing Dynasties were the prosperous periods in the history of Chinese novels. From the Ming Dynasty, novel as a literary form fully displayed its social functions and literary values. Breaking the monopoly by orthodox verses, it achieved an equal position with poems of the Tang Dynasty, ci works of the Song Dynasty and qu works of the Yuan Dynasty in the literary history. The Qing Dynasty was the period when classical Chinese novels started to fall after reaching the zenith and transit to modern novels.

Novels of the Ming Dynasty can be mainly divided into two categories, namely vernacular short novels and full-length novels. By subjects and contents, full-length novels of the Ming Dynasty can be generally divided into four types, namely historical novels, novels of gods and spirits, secular novels and legal case novels. The representative works include Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margins, Journey to the West and Plum in a Golden Vase, etc. The vernacular short novels of the Ming Dynasty further developed vernacular novels of the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Especially in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, as business economy became more active, mind went opener, and the printing industry thrived, vernacular short novels made striking progress from compilation to creation in the transformation from oral literature to written literature. Represented by three collections of short stories edited by Feng Menglong, namely Stories to Enlighten the World, Stories to Warn the World and Stories to Awaken the World, and two volumes of Amazing Stories edited by Liu Mengchu, a number of varied collections of short novels emerged, presenting a scene of prosperity.

The class contradictions, national contradictions and contradictions in the cultural and ideological field in the Qing Dynasty profoundly affected the creation of novels. The period from the early Qing Dynasty to the Qianlong period was a golden era for novels of the Qing Dynasty. Great progresses were made in quantity, content, form, style and school. Novels of the Qing Dynasty were mainly created by literati. Although the literati borrowed ideas from historical and legendary materials, most of the works were based on the reality. They fully embodied the authors' wishes and became more and more mature in structure, narration and figure depiction. The Strange Tales of a Lonely Studio and The Dream of Red Mansions of the Qianlong period respectively pushed classical Chinese novels and vernacular novels to the peak. During the late Qing Dynasty, influenced and driven by the "fictional revolution" launched by Liang Qichao, the literary position of novels was enhanced to an unprecedented level. Also thanks to the great progress of printing technique and the rapid development of a number of neo-type publishing organizations and the modern press industry, novel creation and translation came to an unprecedented prosperity. Better and more influential works of this period include Record of Revelation of Officialdom by Li Boyuan, Strange Events of the Last Twenty Years by Wu Jianren, Mr. Decadent by Liu E and A Flower in the Sea of Sins by Zeng Pu. The four novels are called the "four greatest condemnation novels of the late Qing Dynasty".