Novels Destroy Legal Regulation Of Literature From The Qing Ban

Legal regulation of literature is one of the four main branches of law and literature. The current research of it is limited, but there are broad prospects in this field. This paper attempts to explore some essential issues about the legal regulation of literature through external research of novel-forbidding in Qing Dynasty.This article is divided into four chapters. Chapter Ⅰ is the overview of novel-forbidding in Qing Dynasty. It combs the official ban and banning measures from a historical dimension. Chapter Ⅱ illustrates the diversity of novel-forbidding in Qing Dynasty from ban, forbidding means and folk support. At first it shows the diversity of the ban from law, the commandment from the emperor and local ban; then it shows seven forbidding means:announcements of the bibliographic, the bureau, deleting and modification, issuing orthodox books, encouraging informers, stop translating novels, prohibits the creation of novel workshops; finally it shows the folk support from official apothegm and family motto, school constitution and regulations, public opinions, the story of retribution and other different views. Chapter Ⅲ shows the diversity of literature’s response to the official and public pressure, with the Sequel to the Water Margins and After the Water Margin as examples. Based on the first three chapters, Chapter IV analyses the reasons of legal regulation of literature as well as the nature of this phenomenon, and points out the warning significance of this study to our current cultural policy formulation and implementation.