A Study On The Image Of Scholars In The Twenty Years' Witnessing The Strange Situation

Odd Things Witnessed Over Twenty Years is not only late Qing Dynasty "fiction giant" Wu Jianren’s most representative work, but also one of the four Condemnation Novels of late Qing Dynasty. The book describes the hero’s experiences and knowledge through the20years, scans late Qing Dynasty society fully, reveals various "strange situation" occurred in officialdom, metropolis infested with foreign adventurists, commerce and families during the "big changes" period, shows the complex mental and living condition of the characters. Especially in depicting scholars, it does more comprehensively than Unofficial History of Officialdom, more profoundly than the same period novels.This article studies the scholar images in Odd Things Witnessed Over Twenty Years from four aspects. The first chapter sorts out the background of creating this novel, records the characteristics of the late Qing times in which scholars live. The second chapter inspects Wu Jianren’s life experiences to explore his process of rushing out of the cage and transforming bitterly for the sake of suiting the changeable society and his psychological characteristics and creative motivation. The third chapter lists and classifies the scholar images in Odd Things Witnessed Over Twenty Years to explore their unique living and mental condition. The last chapter cites the scholar images in Odd Things Witnessed Over Twenty Years.Unofficial History of Officialdom and other Condemnation Novels of the same period for comparison. It hopes to gain a clearer understanding and positioning of the literary value of scholar images in Odd Things Witnessed Over Twenty Years.