A Study On The Banquet Descriptions In Water Margin

Chinese culture originates from agricultural civilization. The history of making wine from grains is long. It is recorded that there was a Chinese character (é…‰(you, the old form of Chinese characteré…’(wine)) in inscriptions on bones. Wine can make drinkers enter an unusual sense world. Wine culture, a kind of special culture phenomenon, formed in the process of historical thought and spirit development. Wine and literature are connected closely because wine coincides with some elements of literature creation, such as craze, imagination and passion.There are many descriptions of wine in Water Margin. All the characters in it like drinking; they drink wine in every scene; the development of plots is also associated with wine, restaurants and taverns. We define the descriptions of wine as banquet descriptions, and Water Margine is an excellent literature and art work based on the descriptions of banquets. The banquet descriptions penetrate the whole story, concerning many plots and having profound significance, and the descriptive characteristics and narrative function of them are different from those of former novels. Therefor, their aesthetic significance transcends the former works.This paper contains three parts.The first part is the history of the banquet descriptions. Water Margin is actually the history of wine culture and a social custom picture about wine during Song and Yuan dynasty. The banquet descriptions reflect the social life of that poriod.The second part is the types and function of banquet descriptions. With analyzing the artistic characteristics of the banquet descriptions, the author divides these descriptions into different types and reveals their profound significance and great narrative function. So we can say that the writer of the novel made use of the banquet descriptions to design and organize the plots purposely.The thid part is the significance and aesthetic value of the banquet descriptions. Comparing it with other Chinese classical novels, especially with Romance of Three Kindoms, the author reveals the transcending significance and special qualities in aesthetics of the banquet descriptions in Water Margin.