Mirror Flower Edge

Jing Hua Yuan is a famous novel in the middle of Qing Dynasty. His writing time was after The Scholars and A Dream of Red Mansions.

Before I first read this book, I only read the novel title "The Flower in the Mirror", and I should be impressed by the novel of a gifted scholar and a beautiful woman. In fact, the whole novel has nothing to do with love, but mainly involves myths, travel, essays, art and other themes.

It can be divided into five parts:

1 to 6? Reasons for the robbery of Baihua Fairy and the descendants of Huaxian Fairy

At the banquet of the Queen Mother of the West, the Baihua Fairy and Chang 'e had an argument, and the latter two made a punishment agreement: if all the flowers were in full bloom at the same time, Baihua Fairy would clean the Guanghan Palace. Otherwise, Baihua Fairy will fall into the world of mortals and enter reincarnation.

Unexpectedly, by coincidence, Wu Zetian wrote crazy poems because of drunkenness and ordered a hundred flowers to blossom. It happened that Baihua Fairy was playing chess with people, and there was no perfect countermeasure. Many flower fairies have no heads. They have different opinions. In the end, they all went to the flower party of Wu Zetian's Shanglinyuan in private, and all flowers blossomed at one time.

The Baihua Fairy and the Flower Fairy were sent to earth for robbery.

From the seventh time to the fortieth time, Tang Ao, brother-in-law Lin Zhiyang and Baidu Encyclopedia's series of adventures in Shan Hai Jing.

Tang Ao is the father of Baihua Fairy after she entered the mortal world. She is a middle-aged scholar who didn't take the imperial examination. After she was frustrated in officialdom, she decided to cultivate immortality.

Lin Zhiyang is a businessman selling goods everywhere.

Duojiugong is a well-informed sailor.

The three of them are traveling while doing business. Experienced many wonderful places and things.

These places and things are mainly based on Shan Hai Jing, with the author's bold imagination and deduction, showing many fantasy countries different from reality, but also implying reality.

The following figures are the number of chapters marking the countries visited and the number of chapters showing the scenery.

Animals:? (8) When is Kang? Jingwei? (9) Little people, ponies and meat cheese? Sure enough? (10) unfilial bird flying saliva bird? (15) What kind of fish do you have? Flying fish meet fish and mermaids? (20) Silkworm Man (Ni) and Fine Bird? (2 1) Nine-headed bird, ostrich, vulture, unicorn? (22) Medicinal animals

Plants:? (9) Harmony Evergreen Rice? I wish I could miss grass (mustard in my palm). (twenty-two) green plum dishes

Character:? (10) Luo hongqi (13) Lian Jinfeng? (15) in (16)? 2 1) Wei Ziying Wei Wu? (24) Sima Yier Xu Chengzhi? (26)(27) Yao Zhixin (28) Xiang Xuexuan (30) Yin (38) Yin Ruohua

Country: (8) Dongkou Mountain (10) Scholar Country (13) Qingqiu Country? Adult country (14) Lao Republic Nie Er country without intestines country (15) Yuan stock country Mao Republic Piqian country (16) No heir country deep destination country? Blackpool country (19) Which country is Ren Jingguo (20)? Changguo? State of Bai Min? Xuanyuan country (22) Shushi country (25) Two-sided country (26) Long arm, beaked Tired Ofthe Fire country, Wuxian country (27) Long arm, volcano, winged Xiong Jie country, beaked Republic of China, Wuxian country (28) Cleft tongue country (3 1) Branch A country (32) Daughter country.

4 1 back to 53, the story of searching for father in Tang boudoir.

Tang Guichen, formerly known as Tang Xiaoshan, secretly changed his name to Tang Guichen with his father. Because his father abandoned the mortal world of Penglai and didn't go home with his uncle, he decided to follow his father's wandering route to find his relatives. All kinds of fairies stopped him and robbed him, and all kinds of immortals helped him. Put on a girl version of The Journey to the West.

53rd to 94th? The fairies can freely show their talents in China, and what they talk about covers all professions.

The following figures are the number of chapters to mark the chapters that appear in each major.

(52) Talking about etiquette (53) Talking about history (6 1) Talking about tea (64) Talking about riddles (65) Talking about divination (73) Talking about Go and Karting (74) Talking about chess (75) Talking about sleeves occupying heavenly stems and earthly branches solar terms (77) Talking about drinking (79) Talking about archery, arithmetic, geometry and so on.

Back to the 95th ~100, it shows the end of the immortal, and Wu Zetian returned the imperial power to the Tang Dynasty.

Heaven and earth are vigorous, and only when you dream can you wake up.

"Flowers in a Mirror", rather than being defined as a novel, is better to say:

The first half is based on the novel, recording all kinds of scenery from the imaginary world.

The second half is an academic collection mainly based on novels, which combines the knowledge of various disciplines and the author's research results.

Novels are just carriers for three reasons:

The plot frame mode of the novel is very obvious. For example, in the second part of the novel, Tang Ao traveled to various countries. The author followed the clues of traveling to various countries, and the description framework mainly represented the country was basically the same. In turn, he listed the local customs of various countries, animals, plants and incarnations of various flower fairies, and these girls finally just wanted to follow the merchant ships of Tang Ao to gather in China in various ways, either immediately or another day.

The plot arrangement of the novel is not based on the event itself, but is manipulated by the hand of God. There must be wind and rain, and the distinguished guests should arrive at once. There is no suspense at all, so the plot is not natural.

In the description of the characters in the novel, all the flower fairies are transformed into girls, all of which use the same tone to publicize the author's three views and show the author's talents, including phonology, textual research, poetry and traditional Chinese medicine, etc., and almost 100 people have not created a unique female image.

So the author has no outstanding advantages in the basic artistic elements of the novel. But if the whole book describes the scenery of the imaginary world, promotes enlightenment and records the achievements of academic research, it will be very detailed.

The author expressed many distinct views in the novel, which really played a positive role in educating people at that time.

For example, in The Country of Daughters, the author thinks about the status of women. In the girl country, men and women are completely reversed, which gives us a lot of new enlightenment, especially thinking about the harm of these custom of piercing ears and binding feet to women, and using male feelings to speak for women who are suffering, which was also a pioneer in concept at that time.

For example, the relationship between the Republic of China and Chile, people's different living habits and life spans explain the reasons why people are afraid of sleeping, in order to tell people not to worry too much. At the same time, under the assumption that there is no successor country, people will still be alive and start over 120 years after death. People in China call death "sleep" and people who live in the world "dreams". With this assumption, we can compare and think about human life and death.

Generally speaking, the novel is just a shell, which contains the author's ideas and knowledge. The author is more inclined to express his thoughts and knowledge completely than to portray the characters completely.

This is more obvious in the last fifty chapters of the novel, which is an academic paper wrapped in a novel coat and covers a wide range of academic discussions.

There are not a few people who have this tendency in Qing literature. For example, the contents recorded in Li Yu's "Casual Love" at the same time are also complicated, including the leisure in Six Chapters of a Floating Life, which will be hunted and studied from many aspects. The value of specific research results, because it involves professionalism, we dare not say. However, as a mirror of history, literary works can also reflect the original face of history at that time.

Therefore, we can't just look at this book from the artistic level of the novel. When the author created this novel, perhaps the focus was not on recording stories and portraying characters, but on opening a popular science reading for us in the form of novels. It is against the author's original intention to criticize the artistic gains and losses of novels too much.

Finally, back to the Mirror Flower Edge, the title of the novel comes from the poem at the end of the novel:

It took the author nearly 30 years to write this novel, but he felt that there was nothing new, just a stalk similar to Shan Hai Jing and a box similar to The Journey to the West.

However, the rich knowledge in novels, whether useful or useless, implies ideals and ambitions that cannot be displayed, and no matter what the meaning is, for the old literati, hundreds of novels are really the crystallization of their hard work in this life, and they are the initial intention of the author to meet the right person and see the whole picture in the long river of history.

Isn't this the literary fate that everyone who writes with heart expects to create?

Jane Baoyu's Reading Challenge Punch Card —— Mirror Flower Edge