On The Description Of The Jin Ping Mei Cihua

"Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua" is the first traditional novel describing family life in China ,which involves massively description of feasts. According to the author's statistics, the entire book approximately has 228 feasts and its quantity is without parallel in novel history. At the same time, behind this huge data is hiding "the infinite smoke wave". The former scholars concentrated in researching the culture of drink and food but neglected their function in literary.Therefore, this article pays more attentions on the literary's function of the description about feasts in "Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua". This research is helpful not only to our thorough understanding about literary achievements of "Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua",but also to determining the novel's status in the Chinese classical novel history and clearing off the inheritance relations among novels.Besides introduction and conclusion, the paper constitutes mainly by four parts:In the first part, the author has mainly analyzed the social and cultural context in which the description of feasts appears in"Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua". The author thought the appearance of description about feasts is closely related with the mid and late part of Ming Dynasty 's luxurious social atmosphere, the philosophy ideological trend of respecting human's desire and the atmosphere of seeking innovation in literature.In the second part, the author has classified feasts in"Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua"and summarized its characteristic: About the distribution, the description of feasts concentrates relatively in the 9th to 79th and the quantity is largest in the 78th; About the density of description, the big and small feasts perform alternately and the novel does not evade repeation; About relations between holidays and feasts, the arrangement of holiday services for the description of feasts ; About the content of feasts , the novel contains the music and songs, the wine games, the joke and so on; About the culture of feasting, the novel reflect vividly about the culture of liquor, the culture of food and the decorum and customs of feast in the mid and late part of Ming Dynasty.In the third part, the author has mainly studied the function of description about feasts in the literary :Fristly, the description of feasts is the knot in the narrative structure and connects the trivial and disorder events through feasts, thus they form the complete narrative chain; Secondly, the novel promulgates the objective and display the novel's contradictory manner to the common enjoys through the description feasts; Thirdly,the novel portrays the character image and unfolds the character disposition in the description of feasts; Fourthly,the novel breadens the social contens and impels the development of the plot. Moreover, the description feasts has certain implication function in the whole and the detail in"Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua". In the fourth part, the author has carried on the objective evaluation about the description of feasts in "Jin Ping Mei Ci Hua" and pointed out great significance in enlargeing the contents of feasts and transforming the novel 's narrative idea which has had the profound influence in"A Dream of Red Mansions", "Lin Lan Xiang" and so on.