Research on Buddhist and Baihua Novels from the Tang and Five Dynasties Periods

Author: Yu Xiaohong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: The process of Buddhism's eastward spread was, for China, one of conflict and eventual integration between foreign culture and its indigenous traditional culture. During this process, Buddhist concepts profoundly influenced the ideological and cultural psychology of the Han nationality. The cultural lives of emperors and concubines, literary scholars, and common people were all connected with Buddhism to varying degrees, either superficially or deeply. When monastic monks delivered sermons, they intentionally used narrative and allegorical themes from Buddhist literature to propagate and support the teachings, demonstrating and guiding people. This approach led to the emergence of the vernacular narrative "Bianwen" during the Tang and Five Dynasties periods. From the perspective of its form and themes, some parts of the "Bianwen" already possessed the aesthetic characteristics of vernacular fiction, making it considered the beginning of ancient Chinese vernacular fiction. It also influenced the development of later vernacular fiction and holds significant value in the history of the novel. Ancient Chinese fiction is basically divided into two categories: classical Chinese and vernacular. Therefore, studying ancient Chinese fiction, in terms of academic theory, should be based on an understanding of the "one genre, two styles" of ancient Chinese fiction. The reason why the emergence and development of Chinese fiction differ from those of European fiction is, most notably, because Chinese literature did not develop a tradition similar to Europe's "myth-epic" tradition, or narrative poetry tradition, in its historical process. As a result, the experience of written narrative art was first accumulated in various forms of historical prose books in ancient China—such as "Shituan" (historical biographies) and their derivatives like miscellaneous histories, miscellaneous biographies, and supernatural tales.