Doubts About The Sarcasm Theory On The Scholars

Since Lu Xun defined “The Scholars” as “a Satirical work” in his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction,for a long time afterwards,readers and researchers always appreciated and interpreted the work from the perspective of “Satire”.But as an outstanding realistic novel,irony does not speak for the entire content of “The Scholars”.Therefore this paper questioned the definition of “The Scholars” as a “satirical novel”.Firstly,the paper probed into Chinese Satires.After studying ancient literary theory and literary works,and defining irony and satire,the paper worked on finding out the characteristics of satire and selecting specific satirical literature texts to analyze.Secondly,the paper made close studies of the text of “The Scholars” and the author’s other works.Then the paper drew a conclusion that the author,influenced by “The Book of Songs” and many history books,revealed his satirical taste in the novel.However,irony occupies only part of the novel,while praise takes up the other major aspect.In the novel,the author applies line drawing to depict the story,aiming to record characters and the society from a calm and objective angle.The gist of the novel is to reflect the real faces of the world,especially Confucian scholars,in front of “rank,success,fame and riches”.As author’s intention and gist of the novel are neither around irony,so the novel failed to meet the characteristics of satire,thus it is singled out from satirical works.Last but not least,the paper discussed the reason why “The Scholars” is ranked as a satirical work.The fact is that Lu Xun and other scholars applied the Western novel types and the concept of irony on the interpretation of ancient Chinese novels.As a coin has two sides,this application brought both gains and losses to the novel.Though “The Scholars” established its status in the fiction history and received scholars’ attention and researches thanks to the definition,still,it was limited by the definition.To begin with,there are flaws about this type of fiction itself,and it drove researchers to explore the value of the content from a satirical perspective,neglecting or even misreading its value beyond “satire”.Although this paper brought about question on the hat of “satirical novel” on “The Scholars”,it’s not to deny the superb art of irony embodied in the novel,nor to slight the worth of efforts made by Lu Xun and other scholars,but to unveil the importance of “understanding and sympathy” mentality in the process of appreciating and discussing ancient Chinese novels instead of being trapped by inherent thinking mode.Researchers should dive into the text,embracing the psychology of the writers and the society reflected in the works from an overall perspective.