1. The Four Wonderful Books of the Ming Dynasty refer to "The Plum in the Golden Vase", "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin" and "Journey to the West", and are also called the "Four Wonderful Books" of ancient Chinese novels.
2. These four novels basically represent the four types of ancient Chinese novels, namely novels about world affairs, historical romance novels, novels about heroes and legends, and novels about gods and demons; in fact, they are also representative of the art of speaking in the Southern Song Dynasty. The continuation and development of the four main works: "Jin Ping Mei" is the development of the novelist's novel and is the first chapter-length novel independently created by a literati in our country; "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is the development of the historical novel and is the first full-length novel in our country. "Water Margin" is about the development of Tieqi'er, the first chapter-like novel written in vernacular in Chinese history; "Journey to the West" is about the development of classic novels, and is an artistically accomplished and influential work. A romantic masterpiece, my country's first full-length supernatural novel.
3. "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", a masterpiece of historical romance, uses history as its structure. Chen Shou's "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has laid the basic framework for it. The author narrates the story of the Three Kingdoms. There is me among you, and you among me. The story of one country is always intrinsically related to the other two countries. As Mao Zonggang said in "Reading the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms": "The book "Three Kingdoms" has great connections at the beginning and the end, and a key point in the middle." "From beginning to end, there is no place to break." This structural form is rare in Western historical novels, and researchers call it a braided structure.
4. "Water Margin", a model of heroic legend, has a structural form, using Jin Shengtan's terminology, called the "Luanjiao continuation method", that is, when describing the experience of one character, another character who does not know each other is described. Characters meet in a specific situation, which leads to the story of another character. For example, Lu Zhishen pulled up a willow tree to lure out Lin Chong, and Song Jiang stumbled in Chai Rong's home to lure out Wu Song. The key to this kind of structure is to carefully conceive a specific occasion so that the transition from one character story to another must be natural and clever. To use today's generalization, "Water Margin" has a interlocking structure: after the story of one or two or three heroes is narrated, it will naturally lead to the story of another one or two or three heroes, and the links are interlocked, and finally the story of one or two heroes is narrated. Eight heroes gathered in Liangshan. Jin Shengtan's "Reading the Calligraphy of the Fifth Talent" summed it up well: ""Water Margin" is clearly a biography when one person appears. As for the deeds in the middle, they become their own text paragraph by paragraph."
5. Gods, devils and monsters The masterpiece of the novel, "Journey to the West", has a storyline consisting of three parts: the birth, learning and rebellion of Sun Wukong; the reason for learning Buddhist scriptures and the origin of Monk Tang; and the journey of Monk Tang and his disciples to learn about the West. Due to the limitation of the theme of the original story of Tang Monk's Journey to the West, "Journey to the West" adopts a single-line vertical structure. However, with his superb artistic skills, the author organically organizes the intricate and bizarre contents into a unified and complete huge structure, which people call a bead-chain structure.