An Analysis Of The View Of Novels Written By Tao Zongyi And A Collection Of ShuoFu

Tao Zongyi was one of the most famous scholars in the late Yuan Dynasty.The ShuoFu was written by him collected more than a thousand schools of scriptures,histories,novels and miscellanea from different times.The book which was called ShuoFu was classified into a hundred of volumes recording over ten thousands of items.It was a comprehensive and valuable series of books written mostly in literary sketches with rich content and wide range.The original version was lost and now only exist manuscripts and fragments.The first one was proofread by Zhang Zongxiang which contained a hundred of volumes and the other version was compiled by the Wan Wei hall with 120 volumes.The so called views of novels were such as the cognitions of concept,function,status etc toward novels.The compiling style,the standard for selecting materials and the specific chosen tables of contents also revealed Tao Zongyi’s views of novels to some degree that inherited the main idea of Zeng Zao’s book Lei Shuo as well.Comparing to the General Catalogue of the Four Branches of Literature,the traits of ShuoFu are obvious:firstly,41.5%of the articles from it were included in the General Catalogue of the Four Branches.Secondly,ShuoFu mostly contains scriptures and histories with rich content and wide range.Thirdly,it not only emphasized narrative but also underlined the relationship between scriptures and from it,we can see that it revealed the importance of style.According to Tao Zongyi’s views of novels,novels selected in the book were of wide range and arbitrariness and the author showed an interest towards notes and legends.These were not only Tao Zongyi’s own hobby,but also the specific reflection of the development of novels.ShuoFu was of great values in many aspects as the reserve of documents,the cognition of style and the circulation of it.It further showed the relationship between compiled book and cultural notions.