What are the criteria for the division of short stories?

Generally speaking, it is distinguished by space.

Novel is a literary genre that focuses on portraying characters and reflects social life through complete stories and environmental descriptions. The word "novel" comes from Zhuangzi Foreign Things. Character, plot and environment are the three elements of a novel.

Generally speaking, short stories are distinguished by their length. However, there has never been a strict and unified standard for literary theory.

1. In terms of the number of words, novels are generally more than hundreds of thousands of words, up to several million words;

2. Novellas range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of words, and some reach more than 200,000 words;

Short stories range from thousands to tens of thousands of words, and the length will reach hundreds of thousands of words.

The Development of China's Ancient Novels

China's novels, like other countries in the world, all begin with myths and legends. Some people say that China's novels have many origins, such as fables, historical biographies, hundred schools of thought's essays and so on. In fact, there is only one source, and that is myths and legends. Myth is to deify people, and legend is to deify people; It is difficult to draw a clear line between the two.

In the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, strange novels and character novels appeared. This is the name given by Lu Xun in A Brief History of China's Novels, which I think is well summarized. Myths, legends, anecdotes and people are all recorded as historical facts, and they are recorded through on-the-spot investigation and folk collection, so they are called "records". Knowledge is a record, not a creation. So the original novel and history belong to the same category. For example, Biography of Mu is a myth and legend, but it is listed as the emperor's "lifting column" in history books; Shan Hai Jing is also a myth and legend, but it is classified as "geography" in Han Shu.

It was not until Liang Wenxuan that Xiao Tong distinguished literature from history for the first time. In the preface, he put forward his own literary definition, that is, "things come from meditation and righteousness belongs to algae." But at this time, the literature he refers to only includes poetry, prose and fu, not novels. It was after the Tang Dynasty that China's novels broke away from the historical field and became literary creations. Many new things appeared in the culture of the Tang Dynasty, and the thoughts of literati were also developed and broadened. At this time, legendary novels came into being, such as Song of Eternal Sorrow written by Chen Hong and Biography of Li Wa written by Bai Xingjian, which were all based on legends and were no longer historical. The development of novels in the Tang Dynasty is mainly manifested in imaginative novels and literary talent, which is different from previous works. According to Xiao Tong's literary definition, fiction and imagination are nothing more than "meditation"; "Righteousness belongs to profundity" refers to literary talent. Since then, the novel has developed into literary creation, but ambition and ambition have not stopped as a historical tradition.

Legendary novels declined in the Song Dynasty. Novels in the Song Dynasty are basically based on historical records, and there is no fiction or literary creation and processing, which is very different from novels in the Tang Dynasty. Later, when people wrote historical novels of various dynasties, most of them took the legendary road of the Song Dynasty, that is, they were written according to the records of historical books and failed as literary works.

At this time, the script appeared. After the processing of literati, the script has become many scripts and romance novels. For example, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin and The Journey to the West. Most of them are writers who use folk creation to re-create. Storytelling is the foundation of the folk art of "speaking", which came into being and spread after the art of storytelling. Good at depicting wonderful and moving plots and shaping vivid characters; This is obviously different from novels for people to read, because they are rooted in the art of telling stories.

From here on, it will become an independent creation of literati. At this time, we no longer use folk things to process, but mainly create it ourselves. This kind of masterpiece is Jin Ping Mei, which opens up a new road in the history of novel development. No matter The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin or The Journey to the West, they are all about extraordinary characters or heroes. Jin Ping Mei, on the other hand, opened up a way to write about ordinary people and their daily lives, showing the great development of realistic literature. Along the road initiated by Jin Ping Mei, A Dream of Red Mansions came out, and China's ancient realistic novels reached a brilliant climax.