On Jin Shengtan's Literary Theory

Jin Shengtan was a critic with the greatest reputation in ancient China. He has written a great deal and loved to write the whacky and arrogant criticisms. His literature criticism theory was a differential existence in ancient Chinese literature criticism history. From late Qing Dynasty to this century, searching his life experience and thoughts, probing into his novel and drama theory and unscrambling his works with modern criticism ideology, the academia has done a lot to study Jin Shengtan, escalating the scope. However, the pity is that nobody could ever sum up a masterstroke from Jin's literature criticism theory and study his literature view with it. Based on this, the writer considers: the tradition of expressing one's ambition with literature, bearing the weight of principles and morality with the articles and writing books with the determined effort, the special history conditions and the literature trend of thought at the end of Ming Dynasty and the beginning of Qing Dynast urged the creation of Jin's unique literature conception and these conceptions are fastened to his "Six Books of the Gifted Scholars" which cost his life. The criticisms in the fifth book "The Water Margin" and the sixth book "West Chamber" transferred and enhanced the statues of novel and drama in Chinese literature history and showed the focus of Jin's literature view, the theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth", which believes that the literature is for chatting, playing and enjoying.The theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth" is a literature criticism view which respects the aesthetic features and art compass of literature works. It emphasizes on the artistry of literature and the literature-centered view. Focusing on the theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth", this paper explains Jin Shengtan's literature view in three parts. The first part mainly focuses the study of the theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth" on Jin Shengtan and the whole Chinese literature aesthetics ideology system, studying the origin in history and the effect of temporal time. In the second part, the writer studies Jin's comments on poems, novels and dramas, focusing on Jin's emotion expressing and narrative literature theory and digging the representations and features of the theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth", which includes the way the authors, commented by Jin, take to realize the theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth" in their works, the way in which the theory of "silk heart and embroidered mouth" represents and the way the readers take to establish their own. In the last part, the writer reveals the effect in criticism history and the temporary significance of Jin's literature view centered by "silk heart and embroidered mouth".