What are the characteristics of China's ancient novels?

China's novels have a long history. The word "novel" first appeared in Zhuangzi's foreign articles. The germination of China's novels can be traced back to the oral legends and ancient myths of ancient working people. This part of the heritage is mainly recorded and preserved in books such as Shan Hai Jing and Mu Chuan. During the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, "novel" was never elegant, and it was not a literary genre at all. After Wei and Jin Dynasties, a large number of novels with unique styles, such as Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and People's Tales, produced a relatively prosperous period in China's early novels. For example, Gan Bao's Searching for God and Liu Yiqing's Shi Shuo Xin Yu are all representative works. But the novel at this time, because it is "ambition", that is, collecting records, is not creation, so people classify it with history. It was after the Tang Dynasty that the novel broke away from the historical field and became a literary creation. In the Tang Dynasty, the economy and culture were developed, and the literati's thoughts were more active, so legendary novels based on legends came into being. The decline of legendary novels in the Song Dynasty was followed by the rise of storytelling. After the processing of literati, storybooks become storybook novels and romance novels. Zhang Hui's novels appeared in the Ming Dynasty. Such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin by The Journey to the West. There are also "parody books" written by literati imitating the "story book" system. In Sanyan edited by Feng Menglong, many works belong to parody novels. After this development, there will be independent creation of literati. The novel Jin Ping Mei, which appeared in this period, is the first novel written independently by literati in the history of China's novels. A Dream of Red Mansions in Qing Dynasty carried forward this tradition and made China's ancient realistic novels reach a brilliant climax.

There are many similarities between ancient and modern novels, but ancient novels have their own characteristics. So when appreciating ancient novels, we should appreciate them according to our own characteristics. Specifically, we can start from three angles: understanding the characteristics of ancient novels, appreciating the characters of ancient novels and appreciating the language of ancient novels.

Ancient novels come from the people and reflect their thoughts, wishes and life reality. Ancient novels have the tradition of realism, based on reality, reflecting reality and expressing people's thoughts and feelings; Ancient novels emphasize plot, through which characters are expressed, and through their language actions, their psychology is expressed. Ancient novels inherited the tradition of historical biography literature, describing characters, on the one hand, there are good and evil, right and wrong, on the other hand, good people also have shortcomings, and bad people also have strengths; Ancient novels developed from "storytelling" to Zhanghui novels, forming a pattern in structure and often returning to a pair; The language of ancient novels can be divided into classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese, that is, ancient vernacular Chinese, which is different from the language of modern and contemporary novels to varying degrees.