| In China’s art history, woodcut of Ming Dynasty holds an important place, Wanli Time (1573-1620) is regarded as "the most glorious period" in the growth of woodcut art. The prevalence of woodcut derives from the prosperity of novel illustration. It was in1592that Shidetang Edition of the Journey to the West, which has been recorded as the first unabridged edition, was printed and inscribed, and later in1603Yangminzhai Edition was published. Besides, Yangzhihe Edition, Zhudingchen Edition and Lizhuowu Appraisal Edition in Ming Dynasty, were all illustrated in different ways:Shidetang Edition, the representative of Jinling Style Woodcut, portraying astonishing thearatical stage effect; Lizhuowu Appraisal Edition, the member of Anhui Style known for its slenderness, elegance and neatness; Yangzhihe, Zhudingchen and Yangminzhai Editions, on behalf of Jian’an Style, bearing the characteristic of "illustrations up texts down". However, art critics discuss the illustrations in The Journey to the West mostly from the perspectives of woodcut skill, art style and regional school etc. instead of paying attention to the most important difference between illustrations and other forms of painting (including flower-and-bird painting, landscape painting and figure painting)—the former being created according to the texts of novels. Consequently, the previous studies all fail to interpret the intrinsic implication of illustrations, to figure out the mutual influences among or to evaluate reasonably different editions. Therefore, to further study illustrations in The Journey to the West, it is necessary to combine them with texts, which means the approach of intertexuality should be adopted. With such an approach, the interrelationship between texts—in the form of poetry—existing in time and illustrations—in the form of painting—existing in space will be fully analysed, and thus the illustration study of The Journey to the West in Ming Dynasty will be promoted.Illustrations were as important as texts in ancient China. The former was to the latter what a person is to his/her voice. Traditionally, ancient Chinese books were laid out with "illustrations left texts right" or "illustrations up texts down", which shows that illustrations and texts were inseparable from one another. Therefore, the relationship between them had a major influence on the ancient scholars’ learning, which inspires us to attach equal importance to both illustrations and texts. When intertextuality is employed, the relationship among "words, images and meanings" should be studied. The "words" in texts are first transformed into "images" by creators in their minds and then into "pictures" on plate. Thus, the relationship between illustrations and texts in The Journey to the West can be firstly analyzed from words to illustrations and secondly from illustrations to images. The former means, based on texts, the study should be focused on coincidence degree, expressiveness of illustrations and their moment "freeze-frame" function; the latter means the "images" of a novel in the creator’s mind can be found out through his illustrations."Images" are different from "pictures" shown by texts in that they are the combination of "pictures" and "emotions" and expresses the creator’s art interests and aesthetic orientation. Only following the order of "words-images-pictures" can we determine exactly the relationship between illustrations and texts, discover different "moments" captured by different creators, realize the positive influence of text on illustration generation, and reverse reference and extension that texts receive from illustration generation, make out creators’art pursuit and aesthetic dream, and make reasonable judgment about the illustrations in different versions of The Journey to the West in Ming Dynasty.The theory of intertextuality provides new means to study these illustrations. In Shidetang Edition it throws light on the influence of texts on illustration generation, illustrations’intertextual identity code, interpretation code, action code, symbol code and culture code, and illustrations’reference that change plot of the novel. Through this theory, in Lizhuowu Appraisal Edition, the following characteristics can be understood:the fusion of emotions with scenes brought by medium shot design, the balance between the depictions of characters’actions and the creation tendency to pursue wonderful and elegant scholar painting. In Yangminzhai Edition, increase and decrease of composition elements, changes of space and illustrations’functions of "hastening" or "delaying" plots are elucidated; despite its planar, stylization, rigidness and repetition, this edition is fresh and vigorous. In Zhudingchen Edition a wide variety of relationships between illustrations and texts are discussed. In Yangzhihe, Zhudingchen and Yangminzhai Editions, exists "family similarity". By means of "using pictures to prove history", we, according to the names of cutters left in illustrations, confirm that Lizhuowu Appraisal Edition was printed during Tianqi Time, Ming Dynasty; through "family similarity" between illustrations, the successive relationship between Yangzhihe, Zhudingchen and Yangminzhai Editions is made clear, which ends the long discussion about their relationship. |
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