Hesitating between the elegant and the popular (A Study of Narrative Prose in the Late Ming and Early Qing)

Author: Song Ruoyun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-01-01
Features: This book primarily takes the collection of mock colloquial tales that emerged and were published during the period from the first year of Tianqi (1621) to the sixtieth year of Kangxi (1721), approximately one hundred years, as the research object. Due to the late emergence and ambiguity of the term "mock colloquial tales," mock colloquial studies have faced many challenges. Based on literature, this book first discusses the definition of mock colloquial tales, striving to objectively grasp several basic textual features through a diachronic description of mock colloquial tales. In the first chapter, it provides a scan of the research status of mock colloquial tales over the past few centuries. The second chapter discusses the historical atmosphere in which mock colloquial tales emerged, arguing that the rapid rise of mock colloquial tales in the late Ming Dynasty was not only due to literary context and material conditions (such as the development of paper, printing, and publishing) but also because of other factors. The third chapter begins a detailed discussion of the evolution of mock colloquial tales under historical conditions. After outlining the basic structural features of mock colloquial tales, it divides the novels into three periods and studies the evolution of their titles, introductory passages, and concluding sections. It points out that mock colloquial tales have been in a state of gradual evolution since the formation of their structure, with highly flexible structural changes. The fourth chapter is an analytical study focusing on the narrative subject and narrative characteristics of mock colloquial tales. The fifth chapter attempts to introduce the concept of "charismatic figures" from sociological theory to analyze the cultural significance of characters in mock colloquial tales. It analyzes the group of charismatic figures of ideal types, primarily merchants and female characters, in mock colloquial tales, striving to explain the characteristics, causes, and underlying cultural meanings of such ideal personalities. The sixth chapter analyzes the value subject, value object, and value mediator of mock colloquial tales, seeking to prove that the value orientation of mock colloquial criticism and the aesthetic tastes of readers should be aligned, which should be a standard for popular literature. In the conclusion, it is pointed out that since mock colloquial tales are a literary type that falls between high literature (primarily poetry and prose, aimed at educated scholars) and popular folk literature (folk storytelling, aimed at illiterate or rural readers with basic literacy), they possess unique cultural characteristics. If further research is conducted, more cultural connotations can be out.