Plaks further shows these Ming novels share formal characteristics. Plaks explores the textual history of the novels (all published after their author's deaths, usually anonymously) and how the ironic and satirical devices of these novels paved the way for the great novels of the 18th century. Their educated editors, authors, and commentators used the narrative conventions developed from earlier storytellers, such as the episodic structure, interspersed songs and folk sayings, or speaking directly to the reader, but they fashioned self-consciously ironic narratives whose seeming familiarity camouflaged a Neo-Confucian moral critique of late Ming decadence. Plaks argues that Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West as well as Jin Ping Mei (not considered one of the four classic novels but discussed by him as one of the four masterworks of the Ming dynasty) collectively constituted a technical breakthrough reflecting new cultural values and intellectual concerns. The scholar and literary critic Andrew H. The novels of the Ming and early Qing dynasties represented a pinnacle of classic Chinese fiction. In China, however, there was no counterpart to the 19th-century European explosion of novels. Chinese fiction of the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty was varied, self-conscious, and experimental. In both China and Western Europe, the novel gradually became more autobiographical and serious in exploration of social, moral, and philosophical problems. The rise of a money economy and urbanization under the Song Dynasty led to a professionalization of entertainment which was further encouraged by the spread of printing, the rise of literacy, and education.

They appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, and relative emphasis on collective behavior and the welfare of the society. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and were more historically minded. The novel as an extended prose narrative that realistically creates a believable world evolved in China and in Europe from the 14th to 18th centuries, though a little earlier in China.

Ma Lin, Lin Chong, Hu Sanniang, and Qin Ming ( Water Margin) in Peking opera Background Ĭhinese fiction, rooted in narrative classics such as A New Account of the Tales of the World, Soushen Ji, Wenyuan Yinghua, Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang, Taiping Guangji and official histories, developed into the novel as early as the Song dynasty. The Unofficial History of the Scholars (or The Scholars) īefore the composition of The Unofficial History of the Scholars and the Dream of the Red Chamber, the first four were sometimes referred to as the Four Great Masterworks ( 四大奇书四大奇書 sì dà qíshū 'four extraordinary books').

Another term used is Classical Novels ( simplified Chinese: 古典小说 traditional Chinese: 古典小說 pinyin: gǔdiǎn xiǎoshuō).

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber are most commonly grouped as the Four Great Classic Novels ( Chinese: 四大名著 pinyin: sì dà míngzhù lit. Several terms have been used to refer to the novels and various subgroupings of them.

New jin ping mei gong yue fei