Combination Of Literature And Politics--Critique On Political Novels In Late Qing Dynasty

The modern literature of china produced in the age that the race crisis of Chinese nation unprecedented deepened. So it was gifted with the mission of saving the nation from extinction. Under such circumstances, political novel, which was initiated by Liang Qichao, appeared in literary circles of late Qing Dynasty. But political novel disappeared like a flash in the pan. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the characteristics of political novel and the reason of its failure by cleaning out the literary style of it. In the first part of the article the author simply introduces the times'and culture background. In this part the purpose is to throw the reader a cue that the appearance of political novel accommodate itself to the age's trend. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the race crisis of the Chinese nation unprecedented deepened. The failure of the political reform of China in 1898 made the Chinese realize the importance of ideological struggle. To a great extent, people concentrate on the ideological struggle in order to make great influence on thought to push the political reform ahead. Liang Qichao, who was influenced deeply by Japanese enlightening literature when he was at large in Japanese, introduced the political novel to china. Due to Lang's position, most people in the literary circle followed his lead. He was echoed in the literary circle also because he met the needs of social reform and concentrated on the common concern. Thereby there was a movement of 'new novel'in China. On this ground, political novel was created in China. The second part of the article focus on the artistic characteristics of political novel and its' value in literary history. Because of the springing up of political novel, the traditional literary notion was broke; the position of novel was enhanced. Novel became orthodox school of literary, and the traditional fictional notion was also changed. Because the association between political novel and politics is close, and Liang emphasized on enlightening...