On The Xiaxie Novels Of The Late Qing Dynasty

The Xiaxie novels came into being in the middle 19th century as the human feeling novels of the Qing dynasty, which wrote the stories of actors or actress es and prostitutes in imitating Hong Lou Meng, began to find changes. Accord ing to statistics, there were published more than 40 Xiaxie novels between 1848 and 1910. Their identity of styles, subjects and interior extents made them char acteristic of a school, one that had much influence in the late Qing dynasty. Si nce their existence, the Xiaxie novels received both praises and criticisms. Som e people praised them as "enlightening", "expostulating" or "modernizing wh at has been suppressed"; others criticized them as "obscene", "loose in mora ls" or even "propagating licentiousness" and so on. Whether praised or critic ized, they are worthy of a serious study, if one wants to study the development of the human feeling novels, or if he wants to study the origin of the Mandarin duck-butterfly——Saturday novels.In order to appraise the merits and the demerits of the Xiaxie novels realistica lly, this dissertation, besides historical explanation and theoretical interpret ation, will mainly analyze the texts and draw the unique conclusions on the basi s of the achievements of the predecessors. The paper will discuss them from five aspects: the cause and the development, the unique artistic features, the image expounding, the archetype dissecting and the narrative characteristics.Part one deals with the appearance and the development of the Xiaxie novels of t he late Qing dynasty. Firstly, their appearance is related to their own origin. From the short stories of the Tang and Song dynasties to the imitating stories o f the Ming dynasty and Hong Lou Meng, human feeling novels form the literary foundation of the Xiaxie novels. Secondly, the formation of modern cities, the blooming of the prostitutetrade and the great changes of the living environment lead the townspeople to go after profit and the gentry and merchants to exagger ate romantic deeds. All these form the practical condition of the Xiaxie novels. Finally, the interior factor is that the writers need to express their feelings . The development of the Xiaxie novels from "showing off the virtue", "turnin g to reality" to "showing off the malignity" makes them different in many asp ects. Part two is about the unique interior extents of the Xiaxie novels of the late Q ing dynasty. Their interior extents include three levels. The first one is the s ocial extent, which is represented both by the exposure of the social malpractic es and the description of the miserable life of the prostitutes and by the lash at the traditional morality of the modern metropolitan life and the foreign cult ures. The second extent is emotional. There are respected life-and-death love st ories and also abnormal homosexual love affairs in the Xiaxie novels, but there are more "mutual affections of non-life-and-death love". The third extent is a bout leisure. The relationship between the courtesans and the old-style intellec tuals is based on leisure by nature. Their leisure places are mainly the brothel s and the private gardens. Their leisure is characteristic of collectiveness, se asonality and rituality. Such leisure style is called "the vulgar refinedness" .The third part discusses the images of the Xiaxie novels of the late Qing dynast y. The main characters of the novels are the old-style intellectuals and the pro stitutes. The intellectuals pay close attention to the "nowness" and flow from one place to another due to their existent situation. They are both conceited a nd fully aware of their behaviours. They become divided under the influence of t he trend of the modern times. Some are rethinkers, including the intellectuals w ho are fully aware of their behaviours, and the students who accept new trends o f thought.Some are the leisure classes and their helpers who hesitate between t he other two classes. The rest are those who are incompatibl...