Social and Aesthetic Values of the Novels in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220706.059How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Social values; Aesthetic values; Ming and Qing dynasties; Novels

Abstract

The Ming and Qing dynasties were the cradle of novels. Literati from all walks of life reacted to reality and expressed their opinions through literary works. The novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties are valuable and have research value in the literary history of China and even the world. However, many researchers have taken the Ming and Qing novels as a whole without investigating their social and aesthetic values in detail, which is a great challenge to the academic community. This research paper uses textual analysis as the basis for a comparative study of the social and aesthetic values in several Ming and Qing novels, including Feng Menglong’s Stories to Instruct the World, Stories to Caution the World, and Stories to Awaken the World, Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Wu Jingzi’s The Scholars, and Cao Xunqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber. Social values refer to the educational significance of these novels to the people and society, with the effect of guiding people to goodness while aesthetic values are the use of language and the narrative of tragic stories which bring beauty to readers. The paper finds that social and aesthetic values are not contradictory, and a novel can embody one of them or both.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yuxin Liu
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/07/14
TI  - Social and Aesthetic Values of the Novels in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 3rd International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange（ICLACE 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 290
EP  - 296
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220706.059
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220706.059
ID  - Liu2022
ER  -