A Narrative Study Of Birthday In The Familial Novels Of Ming And Qing Dynasty

Birthday narrative refers to the narrations of events involved in birthday. There are lots of birthday narrations in familial novels of Ming and Qing dynasty. Therefore, the thesis is to explore why and how such a great number of birthday events are narrated, targeted on several representatives of Ming and Qing novels as the major research objects, such as The Golden Lotus, XingShi Yinyuanzhuan, Linlanxiang and A Dream of Red Mansions.The thesis consists three parts: Introduction, Body and Conclusion.The part of"Introduction"is mainly to lay bare the research objective, the research status, the significance, the methodology and the organization.The part of"Body"is the key part which is divided into three chapters:The first chapter mainly generalizes the special significance of birthday occurrence in the familial novels of Ming and Qing dynasty. The significance of birthday in the narrative is manifested in two aspects: plot and structure. In the aspect of plot, accidents develop the plot, generated events extend the plot, local customs enrich the plot, and creating the environment unfolds the plot. In the aspect of structure, the significance is manifested by marking the time of stories and structure, extending the narrative space and shifting the narrative scenes. Due to the special significance of birthday in the narrative, there exist so many narratives of birthday in the novels.The second chapter is to examine various kinds of birthday date endowed with special significance. Such date is manifested by the special relationships between birthday and festivals and the relationships between different figures. The manifestation in the former circumstance: birthday is the same day of a certain festival, a day close with the festival, or a day far from the festival; while in the latter circumstance: the birthdays of some people are close, distantly apart or the same day. Such special birthday date assumes great importance in the narrative. Briefly, the special birthday date is the tactfully arrangement of time in accordance with the requirements of narrations more than a coincidence.The third chapter discusses the regularity and characteristics of the birthday narrative. At first, as to the extent how detailed the narrative is, it is firstly related closely to the status of character in the novel, i.e. the major characters are to be narrated in detail, while the minor characters are narrated briefly. Then it is also in connection with the speed and density of narrative, to be general, inversely proportional to the speed of narrative and directly proportional to the density of narrative. At second, regarding the narrative technique,"preceding narrative"and"supplementary narrative"are properly employed to make the organization of the novels compact.The part of"Conclusion"makes a conclusion of the main content and significance of this paper.