The Archaic Tradition Of Chinese Novel Commentary And Wang Meng's Commentary On The Red Chamber Dream

Since the mid-1990s, the discussions on the aphasia of the Chinese literature theory are lively. There are two hot topics being discussed in theoretical circle, one is the western literary theory merging into Chinese culture, the other is the modern transformation of Chinese archaic literature theory. When studying the modern transformation of Chinese archaic literature theory, it is inevitable to study Chinese archaic literature theory and the unique thinking and expression of Chinese. Comment on Chinese novels, being the main existing style of novel theory, ought to receive enough attention and thorough study.As a contemporary people, Wang Meng's commentary on Red Chamber Dream offers us both a direction and a possibility in practice, so we can inherit and make innovative use of Chinese archaic novel theory heritage. However, academic circles haven't done much in this regard. In addition, the studies on the archaic novels commentary and the studies on Wang Meng's commentary on Red Chamber Dream have always been relatively independent. So by way of studying Wang Meng's commentary on Red Chamber Dream, I will try to clarify the inheritance and the new change in the novel commentary tradition, and summarize the development of novel comment in contemporary.In this thesis, starting with the most representative characteristics of archaic novel commentary and Wang Meng's commentary, I find out the links and differences between them; then, through joining the archaic and modern commentary together, I will identify the development context of novel commentary, which is one of the innovations in this paper. Besides, through the comparative study of archaic and modern commentary, this paper explores the historical conditions and the modern development in theory and practice, which has practical significance for construction of contemporary literary theory. At this point, the thesis has a breakthrough.In this thesis, several research methods are used, such as documentary study, comprehensive study, comparative study and so on. Through documentary research, present conditions on this problem are straightened out. The main part of the thesis refers to the archaic and modern novels commentary comparison, so a few comparative methods are used to contrast, summarize and comprehensive expound in order to revealing their similarities and differences. Through the study, conclusions are got as below:Novel commentary, being a traditional criticism, has its unique value as: Chinese novel commentary is closely integrated with the text of novels and spread with novels, so it plays an important part in the interpretation of intent and writing, the novel theoretical study, guiding readers and promoting the novels'publishing and selling. Comparing with archaic novel critics, modern critics have escaped from the restrictions of the feudal ideology, with a wide vision of literary theory and profound theoretical study of academic background, which makes them stand on a higher starting point. Wang Meng's commentary on Red Chamber Dream is an attempt for Chinese critics to renew the commentary tradition after hundreds years interruption, which declared that this traditional criticism enters into the contemporary Chinese literary criticism.Wang Meng's commentary on Red Chamber Dream contains certain reforms on the novel criticism from content to form. Some of these reforms are to adapt to the objective situation, while some of them are based on Wang Meng's personal style and hobbies. So, Wang Meng's commentary is only a possible direction of commentary criticism in contemporary.There are also a number of foreign literary criticisms in Wang Meng's commentary, which show that the commentary form can also integrate into foreign literary theory to make innovations. It is an important way for Chinese novels commentary to enrich and develop itself by studying on the characteristics of Chinese novel commentary, changing and exploring both the content and form of the novel commentary and making novel commentary more adapt to people's reading habits and aesthetic needs. Commentary, as a criticism pattern with strong Chinese style, the study and application on it, whether as a local literary criticism optional, or to expand the impact of Chinese literary theory, to have its own voice, is not without benefit.The experiments of commentary on contemporary novels are not calm and deep-going enough, containing a mentality of impatience for quick success. Although the commentary on the contemporary works still exist many problems, novel commentary has entered into the criticism on contemporary works, and makes the novel commentary more practicable.