On The Narration Of Letters In Ming And Qing Novels

Letters,as a common application,have a long history in our country,and have various forms and functions.According to the existing materials,as early as the pre-Qin period there have been letters in the nature of the literature records.The official document negotiation between countries or between literacies and officials of different countries,as well as People’s Daily social communication and ideological and emotional exchanges,were mostly carried out through letters,which were characterized by practicability and universality of content.Some official documents and letters are widely involved in the political,military,economic,cultural and other fields of society,and have the document value of preserving historical data and restoring the authenticity of events.Letters evolved from a means of information dissemination to a tool for literati to display their talents and exchange academic ideas,which also promoted the development of literature to a certain extent.In the course of its own development,letters are gradually quoted and absorbed by novels and become a part of the narrative of novels.After the writing of letters in pre-Tang novels,Tang and Song legends and Song and Yuan novels,the technique of using letters in Ming and Qing novels became more sophisticated,and the types of letters were more diverse,such as letters home,love letters,battle letters and so on.Compared with the previous novels,the Ming and Qing novels use letter narration to create more vivid three-dimensional characters,pay attention to the depiction of the civil class and the lower class characters,the language of the characters is more elegant and vulgar to fit the identity of the characters;Letter narration also provides a variety of narrative perspectives to fully demonstrate the inner activities and emotional changes of characters,flexibly switch narrative scenes and narrative angles,break the limitation of a single perspective,and expand the scope of story mapping.Letter narration can also jump out of the process restrictions of the development of events by setting suspense,revealing the truth,making misunderstandings and other forms,so as to make the structure of the story rich in changes,thus promoting the development of the plot of the novel.In terms of the function of transmitting information,letters also promote the generation of the text of novels to a certain extent.Letters have long attracted the attention of literary scholars,but because the number of letters in novels is far less than poetry,Ci Fu,and there is no new novel form of epistolary novel in ancient China,the attention to letters in novels is still insufficient.In order to have a deeper understanding of the relationship between letters and novels,especially the existence,types and functions of letters in novels of Ming and Qing dynasties,this paper will focus on the narrative of letters in novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties.Firstly,it will investigate the origin and development process of letters,and secondly,it will sort out the application of letters in novels of different periods and types,so as to trace back to the source.This paper attempts to dynamically investigate the changes of letters in novels by means of vertical and horizontal comparison.