Cool Copy "Liaozhai", There Are New Ideas

YingChuangTiCao is a collection of mystery stories written in classical Chinese during Qing Dynasty. The author’s signature is ChangBaiHaoGeZi, but there is no final conclusion about his real identity. The book is divided into three parts and12volumes, collecting138classical Chinese novels. As a book modeled after LiaoZhaiZhiYi, its story structure and diction are quite emulated to LiaoZhai, and furthermore, the author’s imaginative and efforts to break through can be seen anywhere. Although the artistic merits is smaller than LiaoZhaiZhiYi, some chapters are hardly distinguished. So it is praised that" highly similar to LiaoZhaiZhiYi, even better at its novelties". Since YingChuangYiCao is an imitation, its value has not aroused enough interests. And studies about this book are not that much, which mainly concentrated on the textual research of its author and ages of completion. Articles about the theme content are very few, and even fewer on the means of artistic expression. And, so far no monograph about the book occurs. This article, based on these blanks, explored the YingChuangYiCao in all-round dimensions with a rigorous attitude. In respects of ages, author’s identity and popular versions, we introduced several different views of predecessors and give our own conclusion after analysis and comparison. We also have a systematic mark out on the theme thoughts and character images and some supplements of predecessors’ results were also added. The most innovative part of this article was exploration of the author’s artistic expression. We not only combined previous research results of narrative techniques, but also developed a lot of supplements of these results. We also initially performed an in-depth study about the poetic novel artistic character and the character image molding methods.This article conducted a comprehensive and detailed analysis on YingChuangYiCao in five chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces former conclusions on the completion time of this book, the author’s identity and XueHong’s work on versions of the epidemic. We compare each viewpoint and put forward our own view at the end of the first chapter that it is reasonable to believe that the author is an unknown literati during the reign of Qianlong. The second chapter lists several kinds of obvious theme thoughts. Five themes are considered as the most important themes, including opera legal themes, family ethics themes, exhortation themes, religious themes and love themes. Then, we divide individual themes into some more detailed small themes, such as the revelation of fake monks and the irony of the Buddhist monks and nuns’s immoral behavior. The third chapter discusses the female characters in this book, dividing female characters into four general categories including courageous and self-reliant, accommodating and right-minded, smart and housewife, brilliant and better than man. We also introduce some relatively unique female characters, such as the tough and rude Siniang in TianYiGui and the treacherous and malicious Nainiang in WanGong. At last, we make a summary of all these female characters to explore the author’s female view. And the conclusion is that ChangBaiHaoGeZihas a progressive female view in general, but he can’t get rid of the long reign of feudal ideas. So, sometimes, the author unselfconsciously becomes the advocate of the feudal ideas, and shows some decadent and backward female views. The fourth chapter which mainly concentrates on the artistic methods of this book costs the most time and thoughts. The more valuable artistic methods in this book can be divided into three categories:art of poetic character, character image molding methods and narrative methods. There are some articles exploring the narrative methods before. Based on these articles, this article performs a more intensive study on it and analyses the narrative methods from three aspects which are narrative structure, narrative time and narrative perspective. Very few or even no attention was attracted on the art of poetic character and character image molding methods, which make this chapter the most initiative part of this article. The fifth chapter clarifies the relationship betwcenYingChuangYiCaoand LiaoZhaiZhiYi. As an successful imitation of LiaoZhaiZhiYi, some contents of TingChuangYiCao can hardly be distinguished. The more remarkable thing is that the author really spends a lot of efforts to innovate, not just an imitation. So, above all, although YingChuangYiCaois an imitation whose artistic merits is less than LiaoZhaiZhiYi. But it is not only an simple imitation. The author’s imaginative and intelligence can be found in anywhere of this book. We should give an objective comment on it and see its literary value.Due to the limitation of author’s wit, discussions on many aspects are not that intensive, leaving much to be desired. But this couldn’t be a reason to deny the success of YingChuangYiCao as imitation and its merits to be an independent literature. More studies about YingChuangYiCao are needed. And it will attach more and more importance in the future.