[Literary Works] Journey to the West
They all have extremely high literary level and artistic achievements, and the profound truth contained in them has been praised by rulers of past dynasties. But what we don't know is that in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, China actually had six masterpieces. Then which two books were deleted, and what was the reason? Bao will introduce it to you today.
The Water Margin?
The reasons for becoming the four classic novels
After the founding of New China, the state put forward the slogan of "improving people's cultural level" in order to popularize education and improve people's literacy rate. In response to the call of the country, People's Literature Publishing House specially selected six works with high literary and artistic quality from the vast number of ancient books for sorting, revising and printing. Due to the financial and manpower problems at that time, People's Literature Publishing House first printed four books, namely The Journey to the West, Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of Red Mansions.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Unexpectedly, these four books were well received by the broad masses of the people as soon as they were introduced to the market. Other publishing houses have followed suit, and there is an upsurge of reading "Four Classic Novels" in China. However, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and The Scholars, originally intended to be published later, have also been put on hold for the time being. Later, although Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio and The Scholars were published as scheduled, their popularity could not be compared with the four classical novels published some time ago, and they also fell out of the "six famous books".
Dream of Red Mansions
Since then, China people only know "Four Great Classical Novels" and know little about the other two books. For the understanding of scholars, most of them learn from "Fan Jinzhong Residence" in junior middle school Chinese textbooks. Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio has been made into various ghost films by directors of all sizes. So what is the status of these two works in the history of China literature? Don't worry, let's keep looking down.
Scholars
The author of The Scholars is Wu, a novelist in Qing Dynasty. He himself tried for many years, and his family was ruined and he experienced human suffering. Therefore, his works deeply criticized and mocked the corruption of bureaucracy and the hypocrisy of imperial examination ethics at that time. The Scholars pioneered the direct evaluation of real life with novels, and represented the peak of China's ancient satirical novels. After the manuscript was published, a manuscript was handed down from generation to generation.
Scholars
Later generations spoke highly of this scholar. Mr. Lu Xun thinks that the ideological content of the book is "safeguarding the public interests and criticizing the shortcomings of the times", while Hu Shi thinks that its artistic characteristics can be called "refinement". In the field of international sinology, The Scholars enjoys a high reputation and has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Spanish. Some people even think that this work can rank among the world's literary masterpieces, comparable to the works of world-renowned writers such as Boccaccio, Cervantes and Balzac.
The title of Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio in Qing Dynasty
As for Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, there are 49 1 short stories, which can be roughly divided into three types. They are: praising love, attacking the imperial examination system and exposing the darkness of feudal rule. The author used a lot of stories to show his strong spirit of anti-feudal ethics. Therefore, Guo Moruo called Pu Songling "writing ghosts and writing demons is superior, and stabbing greed and stabbing abuse to the bones."
The title of Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio in Qing Dynasty
Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio has also developed China's ancient short stories in classical Chinese to a new height, becoming a best seller in novels, and classical Chinese novels have prospered again. /kloc-After the 0/9th century, Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio appeared in more than 60 foreign languages, including English and German, and was written into the encyclopedias of major countries in the world, enjoying a high international reputation.