Traditional Resources·Current Situation·Literary Changes

This dissertation aims at studying the whole picture of the novels of the iaie Qing Dynasty and its position in the history of Chinese novel.Novel of the late Qing Dynasty or "The New Novel", of which the amount is very large, the types are very complicated, there are also different views and writing styles among different writers, therefore, a great difficulty does exist in making a whole picture of it. Besides, Novel in the late Qing seems both the epilogue of Chinese classical novel and the prologue of Chinese modern novel, thus it is difficult to deal with its position in history of Chinese novel. For the researchers, it is no longer satisfying to simply describe this period as a "transitional period" or describe the Novel as "mixture of the new and the old-fashioned", what they want to get is more accurate and more concrete opinion. And that is the objective of this dissertation.Though it is a prevailing view to regard the late Qing as a "Modern transition" period in Chinese novel, when researchers observe the changes occurring in this period according this view, they are easily to be lead to neglecting those phenomena which carried no significance of "Modern transition" and those phenomena which even carried significance of "anti-Modern transition", and finally lead to overstating the degree of "Modern transition" in this period. So, this dissertation is to make a study of the novels of the late Qing Dynasty in the context of traditional novels, any dramatic changes happened in this period -No matter there is or not a significance of Modern transition -will be also taken into consideration, so that a much accurate picture can be presented; a comparatively objective conclusion upon the historical position of the novels of the late Qing can be drawn.First, the whole development process will be described in Chapter One and Chapter Two. The changes of the views of Novels writing are the interior motive of the change of the Novel of late Qing. Facing the unprecedented national crisis, thesociety of the late Qing came to realize that it was necessary that much wider social power was to be mobilized and involved into the social reform, an instrument that can be taken to enlighten the common people was earnestly searched for, such is the background, upon which the Novel style had been put into the perspective of Theorists. It is quite clear that the rise of the position of Novels advocated by the theorists of Novels of the late Qing, is in the conformity with the social necessity, it is a way of intensify the tradition thoughts of "writing to spread the ideal of Dao" rather than to elevate the independent consciousness of literature. Those defects of the theory of "the New Novels" made the "Revolution of Novels" hard to last.In the year of 1906-1907, the development of the Novels of the late Qing had entered another stage, the call for the correction of "Revolution of Novels" occurred, but quite a lot of novelists got away from the above ideas in their novel-writing, instead ,they inclined to take Novels as "books for entertainment". They indulged in writing and translating detective fiction, romantic fiction and other popular fiction; on the other hand, they were no longer interested in history fiction, political fiction, science fiction, which were thought most useful types by advocator of the "Revolution of Novels". So, the "Revolution of Novels" had declined.After we have traced back the process of the Novels of the late Qing, a great change in its will and content should be put for our observation in Chapter Three and Chapter Four.First of all, we are interested in finding the overall characteristic when the imagination world is to be built, and the kernel idea of Man expressed by Novels. Most novelists in late Qing showed resentful opinion about "Ghost Fiction" (#,8MN $) , declaring that this type of fiction was harmful to the objective of lifting the people's intelligence. They tried to write science fiction even they were not good at it; they also spared no pains to write novels exposing the great impair on the nation. In the imagination world built by these novelists, there were no God, celestial being, ghost, monster and any other supernatural beings, and there were no supernaturalpowers which were often described in traditional novels. In the New Novels, characters are Man and not other beings; plots were based on realistic and social conflict. So, we can say that the novelists carried out their writing strictly within the scope of the reality and this world, within the world of material and man, so that a much solid foundation is provided for the realism. These aspects reflect that because of the influence of the traditional theory of human nature and traditional moral concept, the Novels of late Qing showed a basic difference between the modern Chinese novels.Out of the purpose for mobilizing people getting involved into the social reform, the Novels of the late Qing made much effort to awaken the sense of dignity and mission of Man, but the belief expressed by it is Man is to be taken as a citizen, any individual feeling and need must be repressed, and the obligation of being a citizen must be taken as a priority. In the social expose fiction ($t^?