The Concept Of Chinese Classical Joke In Ming Dynasty

Researches on classical funny story date back to as early as the beginning of last century. In the first half of20th century, the word "humor" was introduced by Yutang Lin, followed by the emergence of a number of workshops, monographs, and selections. Nevertheless, the connotation and denotation of Chinese classical funny story is not yet conclusive and still open to dispute.Instead of focusing on modern people’s understanding towards classical funny story, this thesis turns to ancient time. The Ming Dynasty, a time when classical funny story developed rapidly into its peak, is relied on to study the ancient people’s understanding of funny story, including the nature of this literary form, its function orientation, material source, genre, form, and historical origin.This thesis consists of three chapters and a catalogue. The first chapter investigates the compilation of classical Chinese funny story book in catalogues, novel collections and cyclopedias of Ming Dynasty. The goal is to shed light on the official views and intellectuals’ opinions towards this type of writing.The second chapter examines and explains three literary forms that are related with classical Chinese funny story as well as the grammatical terminologies "Gu Ji","Xie Xue" and "Xiao Hua". It is researched that how they originate and enter the domain of classical Chinese funny story. Besides, the view of ancient people in Ming Dynasty towards classical Chinese funny story is outlined and refined through investigating how those literary forms and terminologies are utilized by people at that time.The literary form perception of classical Chinese funny story in Ming Dynasty is studied in the third chapter, with funny story book itself being the object. Specifically, two aspects, namely, its compilation approach and the classification of such books, are investigated in order to cast light upon the notion towards funny story held by the compilers themselves.The catalogue is a list that provides the general picture of classical Chinese funny story book in Ming Dynasty.