Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and Yuewei Caotang Notes are both classical Chinese novels in Qing Dynasty. What are the main literary differences between them?

Both of them are collections of short stories in classical Chinese, and both of them are strange novels. There is not much difference in essence, but Yuewei Caotang Notes lacks description compared with Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, which is one of the differences. (See Zhang Heluo's new book The History of China Literature).

Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio (hereinafter referred to as Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio) is a landmark work in the development of ancient Chinese classical short stories to the Qing Dynasty. The ideological content and artistic achievements of this novel reached the peak of the development of China's classical novels, which had a great influence in the history of China literature. As a result, Liaozhai became popular all over the world as soon as it was published, with comments and comments, attracting many authors to follow. Some people imitate the writing skills of Liaozhai, such as Yu and Suilu, while others object to the style of Liaozhai. At that time, Ji Xiaolan's Notes on Yuewei Caotang (hereinafter referred to as Yue Wei) was the most successful.

Ji Yun, whose real name is Xiaolan, was born in xian county (now Cangxian County, Hebei Province), Hejian Prefecture, Zhili, Qing Dynasty. Born in the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, he was the official to the history of the Ministry of Rites and co-sponsored the university students. Ji Yun was a famous scholar and great talent in Qing Dynasty. He presided over the compilation of Sikuquanshu and personally wrote the 200-volume Summary of Sikuquanshu, which made outstanding contributions to the preservation of traditional culture and the study and research of future generations. Yue Wei is a note novel written in his later years. His notes are divided into five parts: Summer in Luanyang, So I Smell, Huaixi Magazine, Thoughts on Listening, and Continued Records of Luanyang, and each part is written separately. Ji Yun is against the style of Liaozhai, and once wrote a negative article of Liaozhai Fox Dream directly. I once questioned the narrative of Liaozhai: "The pen of a gifted scholar. Not the author's pen. ..... The novel is narrative, not as close as the theater, and it is casually decorated; ..... Today's Yan Ni's writing, the state of the media, subtle twists and turns, such as life, it seems unreasonable to let it speak for itself. How can we hear it with the author's endorsement? I haven't solved it yet. " Criticize the "one book and two styles" in Liaozhai, and think that as a narrative article, it should "have the purpose of admonishing and punishing evil without losing the meaning of loyalty and righteousness", "do not reverse right and wrong", "do not imitate talented people and beautiful women" and "do not draw horizontal words". Sheng Wei's comments on various schools in the Qing Dynasty mentioned that Feng Zhenluan, a critic of the Qing Dynasty, was very dissatisfied with Ji Xiaolan's criticism of the narrative of Liaozhai and wrote Reading (Liaozhai); Miscellaneous notes, angrily pointed out: "Liu Quan's book" Zhiyi "is popular all over the world and widely read, while Yuan Jianzhai's theory on its reproduction, which Ji Xiaolan called the pen of a gifted scholar, is not a literary style, and it is all said in the past." And he said, "Compared with the water margin and the West Chamber. It is a rare pen and ink in the world, which is precious. "... not only denied Ji Yun's point of view, but also highly affirmed and praised Liaozhai, which shows the position of Liaozhai in classical Chinese short stories. There are many differences between the two novels in narrative function and effect, which are embodied in the following aspects:

First of all, the forms of expression are different. From the form of expression, China's ancient classical Chinese short stories are mainly divided into two artistic forms: notes and legends. Yue Wei is a typical note novel, which takes the form of note novel. Someone once described note novels as follows: note novels are written by officials, and people's "street talk" and "hearsay" are recorded with short notes. They are "small words, short in length, but small in form and content". Therefore, summing up the characteristics of note novels are: simple plot, short length, simple language and emphasis on reasoning. As a representative of note novels, Yue Wei fully demonstrated the distinctive features of note novels: first, the narrative was short; The second is to pay attention to reasoning. Liaozhai is a wonderful book with "one book and two bodies", which successfully draws on many narrative methods of historical biographical literature. There are about 300 novels in Liaozhai, which, in terms of artistic form, contain two themes: legend and strange stories, and are praised as typical stories and strange stories. Lu Xun's A Brief History of Chinese Novels says:

"There are many strange books in the late Ming Dynasty, mostly simple books, and there are many strange books, but they are born without feeling. Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is unique in details.

It is normal, which makes the flower demon fox more attractive, more human, and easy to be amiable, forgetting the alien, and occasionally seeing the stork, knowing its inhumanity. "

The success of Liaozhai lies not only in the narrative twists and turns of the legendary novel, but also in the strangeness.

Romance of novels can avoid the limitation of the length and language of note novels. Lu Xun praised this legendary novel not only because of its beautiful writing, twists and turns, but also because it "tells stories with ups and downs and many fragments;" Moreover, the author often deliberately shows the fiction of this story to see his imagination. " Li Zongwei also said in "The Legend of Tang Dynasty": "Legendary novels expand all the strange things that can stir the audience and leave a strong impression on readers. The style of writing strives to be beautiful and moving, and does not avoid ostentation, especially focusing on description and the author's narrative and imagination. "In addition, judging from the development of the two types of novels, although the note novels were mature in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, compared with the note novels, the legendary novels have advantages in language, structure and many other aspects." Reading micro has obvious note-taking characteristics. The characteristics of simple narration and emphasis on reason lead to the abandonment of the rich literary spirit and artistic realm of Liaozhai, the insufficient expression of words and the less rich reading experience. Although the reasoning in Yue Wei makes its narrative concise and thorough, Yue Wei pioneered the style of reasoning, or narrative before discussion, or after discussion, but it is not longer than literary description, which makes Yue Wei in his works lack vivid image, that is, lack of literariness, which is similar to the narrative effect expected by Liaozhai in his works. Ji Yun and other literary critics believe that the Qing Dynasty advocated the writer's pen and rejected legendary novels. Therefore, although Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is a note novel, it is characterized by "casual decoration", "exquisite twists and turns, vivid description" and "one book with two bodies, which is not solved", that is, Ji Yun does not understand the existing note novels in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. The two works adopt different narrative art forms, so the narrative functions of the works are different and the effects achieved by the works are different.

Secondly, the ideological content is different. The ideological content reflected by the two works in different narrative ways is quite different: in terms of ideological content, Yue Wei mainly advocates "admonition and punishment", followed by "karma". Ji Yun himself did not shy away from the exhortation theme of his works. At the beginning of the first volume, he clearly put forward the theme of his works: "It is beneficial to persuade and punish", which is also emphasized in the two prefaces. He said in the preface to a prosperous time: "If you want to make people know it, you should persuade and punish it." Zheng Zuoxu: "The general idea is to persuade and punish." . Visible, Yue Wei has the function of persuasion and punishment. Pu Lide, the grandson of Pu Songling, thinks that the ideological content of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is mostly related to ghosts and gods; Its body imitates the biographies of past dynasties; When it comes to praise or touch, the narrative research of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is used for admonition and punishment. " Although the narrative of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio also has the intention of persuading and punishing, it mainly focuses on the ideological content of directly attacking the dark politics of the society at that time, widely exposing the shortcomings of the imperial examination, enthusiastically praising the love between young men and women, and reflecting the theme of the important times at that time. "Reading micro" is to "make people know it and persuade them to punish it", so it strongly advocates feudal morality and karma. For example, the article "The Old Daughter is in Tangxi" describes that the old daughter falsely accused a woman of being pregnant in her previous life, which led to her death. In this life, ghosts come to kill her, and the retribution is not good. But in Liao Zhai, Pu Songling's attitude towards love is fundamentally different from that of Ji Yun. For example, Nie, Pu Songling and other works enthusiastically praised the love of young men and women. It can be seen that there are great differences in ideological content between the two works.

Third, the image innovation is different. The innovation of the artistic image of Liaozhai is mainly manifested in three aspects: characters, plots and language. In the Complete Works of Pu Songling, Sheng Wei analyzed the author's emotional psychology in this way: "On the one hand, the lifelong imperial examination made the author feel depressed and unknown, on the other hand, his long-term teaching career under the protection of others made him abandon his wife and children, which inevitably led to" several volumes of books, half a window is cold; The sigh of "cold in the desert", therefore, loneliness and anger and the desire for "bosom friend" have become his emotional themes. " Pu Songling created this image with "loneliness and anger", which shows that the author soothes his emotional world with the illusory and romantic fox image in his works. In the world of foxes, ghosts and flowers, the author describes foxes as adults, writes people and things with foxes, endows foxes with human thoughts and characters, describes stories completely according to people's lifestyles, and endows foxes with humanized feelings. Weaken the evil spirits of the fox in the works and increase the human touch. Describing the vicious, cunning and treacherous fox that people hate as an ordinary person with secular wisdom has fundamentally changed the fox image and made the fox image in Liaozhai break through the shackles of traditional novel concepts. Let the fox image be "more human and amiable". It has creative significance in the creation of literary works with the theme of fox spirit, which makes the fox have people's favorite character and image. The expansion and transcendence of the traditional fox spirit theme has created a brand-new realm for the novel creation of similar themes. In language, Pu Songling used "the pen of a gifted scholar", focusing on describing people, being good at describing them, writing in a tortuous and delicate way, and being very literary. He created a series of fox fairy images with human nature and human feelings, which enhanced the ideological and aesthetic values of artistic images. The language feature of Liaozhai is that it can integrate fresh and lively spoken language into profound classical Chinese. Just like the mousetrap in Ah Xian, she is beautiful, kind, kind, hardworking, caring and self-respecting. In addition to the "extraordinary" of "building a warehouse every day" and "having more than one year", she is completely the image of a working woman, which is an outstanding creation of Pu Songling. Ji Yun is a great scholar with rich experience and brilliant literary talent, but his thoughts are conservative. Memories of Ghosts and Ghosts often implies a tendency to preach doctrinal principles and emphasize "the writer's pen". Therefore, Ji Yun's reading micro lacks artistic innovation in these aspects. Lu Xun's "How to Write Three Leisure Collections" comments on this:

"Ji Xiaolan's Notes on Yuewei Caotang revealed that he only wrote about events, avoiding thinking and hiding words."

Judging from the aesthetic and educational functions embodied in the narratives of the two novels, Pu Songling integrated his true feelings and emotions about life and society into the novels when writing. Although his works also have the meaning of exhortation, he tries to make facts play the role of punishing evil, praising ideals, attacking darkness, promoting good and punishing ugliness, and puts strong love and hate in the narrative, sometimes directly in the form of "different historical days". However, due to the influence of the author's thoughts, the theme of Yue Wei cannot be compared with Liaozhai. In addition, Yue Wei did not pay attention to the flexible use of language, but only paid attention to the persuasion and punishment of facts and karma. It uses a rigid narrative to complete the work, forcing people to maintain the position of the ruling class. It can be seen that there is a big gap between the two works in realizing aesthetic and educational functions.