What is the main reason for the rise of the novels in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties?

Shiki novels: shiki, that is, the record of the strange, mainly refers to the Wei and Jin dynasties produced a description of the gods, ghosts and monsters as the content of the novels, but also can include the Han dynasty of the same kind of work. Zhiwei novels were formed under the influence of the social trend of talking about ghosts and gods and claiming supernatural powers, which was formed by the prevalence of fairy magic at that time. The contents of the novels are very complicated, which can be roughly divided into three categories, showing off the geography and museum of the trivial news such as Dongfang Shuo's "Divine Anomaly Scripture", etc.; recounting historical rumors other than the official history of the story, such as the name of Bangu's "Hanwu Stories", etc.; talking about ghosts and gods of the strange superstitious stories, such as Eastern Jin Dynasty Ganbao's "Searching for the Divine" and so on. The novels had a direct impact on the Tang Dynasty legends.

Zhiqi novels refer to the novels with the color of gods and monsters in the period of Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, and most of them originated from the strange stories of witches and magicians.

After the Han Dynasty, Taoism and Buddhism gradually flourished, and the superstitious teachings of ghosts and gods were widely circulated, so there were especially many books on magic and monsters. There are many works in the Six Dynasties named "Zhiqi". Such as Zutaizhi's "Zhiqi", Cao Bi's "Zhiqi", Kong's "Kong's Zhiqi", etc. ("Zhiqi"). (The term "Zhiqi" is derived from Zhuangzi's "Journey to the Promised Land": "Qi Harmonizers, Zhiqi".) Modern writer Lu Xun's "A Brief History of the Chinese Novel" is specifically listed in the "Six Dynasties of the ghosts and gods of Zhiqi" up and down.

Chi monster novels can be cited as representative of Gan Bao's "Search for God". The existing 20 volumes, is the Ming Dynasty people re-edition of the remnants of the collection, but also mixed with some suspicious chapters. The book collected many stories of gods and monsters before the Jin Dynasty, making it a compilation of novels. Some of the beautiful myths and folklore, such as "Dong Yong", "The Tomb of the Three Kings", "Han Bing's Wife", etc., have long been circulating in the folklore, and some of them had been compiled into operas and vernacular novels.

The more complete novels are also rumored to be Tao Yuanming's So Shen Hou Ji, Wang Jia's Gleanings, Liu Jing Shu's Yi Yuan, and Wu Jun's Continued Strange and Harmonious Records, etc. Most of the other books have been lost. Most of the other books are scattered, only part of the anonymous text collected in the ancient novel hook sinking.

However, people at that time did not write it as a novel, such as Gan Bao "preface to the Book of the Search for God", said that he wrote the book is used to "invention of God's way of not false", that is to say, in his view, God is real. Therefore, people at that time regarded these books as historical works. Now we call these books novels, on the one hand, we refer to the classification of bibliographies since the Song Dynasty, and on the other hand, we also look at the development of Chinese novels from the perspective of their historical origins. Because it is from the Six Dynasties of the ghosts and gods in the strange, gave birth to the Tang dynasty legend novel (Tang dynasty legend of course, but also by the influence of historical literature), such as the "ancient mirror", "Pillow in the record", "Liu Yi biography" and so on is the new development of the story of strange and ghostly, and the Tang dynasty legend is the development of the Chinese novel is a sign of maturity.