A Study Of Small Characters In Qing Dynasty Satirical Novels

It is not only a masterpiece of classical Chinese fiction,but also a prelude to the novels of the May Fourth period.The richness of its characters is also unique.They are often presented in the works as small producers or proletarians.The author’s reading of the latter text reveals that the image of the minor character accounts for a relatively large proportion of the satirical novels as a whole and has important research value.Therefore,this paper discusses and studies the characteristics of the type of the minor character,the shaping techniques,the causes and the significance of the minor character in Qing Dynasty satirical novels.In the first part,the characters of the satirical novels are divided into two types of characters: positive and negative,whose character traits are more direct and distinctive.The negative character traits are summarized as the image of the elegant and deceitful,the image of the foreigner and the traitor,the image of the sinister and cunning,the image of the scheming and the image of the profit-oriented and the image of the feudal and corrupt,the ignorant and the ignorant.The second part of the study examines the author’s writing techniques in shaping the minor characters.Through reading the text,we find that in the description of the minor characters’ appearance,the author is able to accurately grasp the soul of the minor characters,using only a few words to accurately outline the character’s image and allow the reader to perceive the character’s inner personality,in the linguistic description of vivid images,this linguistic description matches the image of the minor characters and is rich in the atmosphere of the marketplace.The author also uses unique characterisation techniques such as The author also uses unique characterisation techniques such as the use of anecdotes,contrasts and exaggerations to portray the characters in a three-dimensional manner.The third part analyses the reasons for the proliferation of minor characters,which I divide into objective and subjective aspects.From the objective aspect,the social trend of the time had further improved the understanding of people-oriented thinking and a new understanding of the value of the masses,mainly due to the commercial prosperity brought about by economic development,which led to the widespread distribution of minor characters in all areas of society and gradually became a major component of social life.At the same time,from the Ming dynasty onwards,the focus of the novel’s subject matter had shifted towards market life,so it was only logical that minor characters would appear in large numbers.From the authors’ own point of view,their unique life experiences made their writing vision unique and their style very different from that of previous novels,and secondly,the specificity of the literary medium made it necessary for the authors to pay attention to readers’ preferences and to expand the sales of their novels in this way,while at the same time the authors learnt from their predecessors’ novels and innovated in their creation of small characters.The fourth part summarizes the significance of the minor characters,mainly from three aspects: social,literary and aesthetic.In terms of social significance,the minor characters show us the special social environment of the Qing Dynasty from the side,restoring the real life form,and at the same time,their appearance also highlights the demand of the times to help the world and criticize the current problems.From the point of view of literary significance,the minor characters add dramatic effect to the plotting,and their own wisdom in dealing with the world also deepens the theme of the novel to a certain extent.They are also a reference for future generations of satirical fiction.From the perspective of aesthetic significance,a summary of the minor characters reveals that the successful minor characters portrayed by the authors are mostly of the ’ugly’ type,which greatly subverts the aesthetic perception of truth,goodness and beauty in classical Chinese novels.The characters in Qing Dynasty satirical novels are absurd and comic in nature,and they make the reader reflect on them while making him or her laugh,so the negative characters often leave a deeper impression on the reader."These two aspects together constitute the aesthetic dimension of the minor characters in Qing Dynasty satirical novels.