As far as I know, Jin Shengtan was the first to rank popular novels. According to him, he intends to comment on Zhuangzi, Li Sao, Historical Records, Du Fu's Poems, The Water Margin and The West Chamber. During the reign of Kangxi in the late Qing Dynasty, Mao Zonggang and his son revised the History of the Three Kingdoms under the guise of Jin Shengtan, calling it the book of the first scholar-Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which can also explain some problems entrusted by them in the name of Jin Shengtan instead of earlier people). At that time, there was the theory of "four wonders of Ming Dynasty", and its proposal should also be regarded as a commercial means of booksellers (booksellers at least played a propaganda role); Later, the Red Chamber replaced Jin Ping Mei as the "Four Wonders of Ming and Qing Dynasties", and the four wonders were finalized. "Four classic novels" are modern expressions of "Four Wonders", so it won't be too early.
Therefore, the formulation of "Four Great Classical Novels" (the four fantastic books) must have appeared after the book A Dream of Red Mansions was written.
However, some people have verified that the statement of "Four Wonder Books" should have been established in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties.
Li Yu once said in the preface to The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the printed edition of Drunken Classics Hall: "Feng Menglong also has four fantastic books, namely The Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Jin Ping Mei. ..... "It can be seen that in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Feng Menglong had formulated the four wonderful books mentioned by Li Yucheng and published them as the" first wonderful book "in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so the reference to the" four wonderful books "has been quite fixed and popular.
But in any case, the expression of "Four Wonder Books" is the original expression of "Four Classical Novels", which should be confirmed.
=======================================
A Dream in Red Mansions
A dream of red mansions, endless, endless, is really a wonderful book!
A Dream of Red Mansions is the most famous, widely circulated, read and published novel in ancient China. Since the publication of this classic, critics have mushroomed and commented on it, naturally forming a remarkable school-A Dream of Red Mansions. People are still publishing, reading and studying A Dream of Red Mansions. This is the eternal charm of this classic and this is the immortal value of this classic. Master of North and South Chinese painting, it took two years to create 350 colorful Chinese paintings. The painter artistically reproduces the rich social life and vivid characters of the original with pictures, descriptions of modality, performance of scenes, splashing ink and thick ink, or meticulous sketches.
[Literary Works] Journey to the West
Wu Cheng'en's mythical novel The Journey to the West, with its grand scale, tortuous plot, vivid language and rich imagination, is a treasure in China's ancient novels. "Famous Artists Painting Four Classic Novels Journey to the West" invited more than 40 famous painters, including Dai Dunbang and Zhao Hongben, to draw 240 Chinese paintings with high artistic content, either rough and bold, or simple and beautiful, with colorful paintings of people, gods, demons, monsters, mountains, water, flowers, insects, birds and animals, sketched with meticulous brushwork, or freehand brushwork, or rough and bold. Words add elegance to the painting, and the painting has a unique charm, with pictures and texts alternating.
The Water Margin?
Shi Naian's novel Water Margin has extremely vivid life scenes and colorful characters. Water Margin 108 is a wonderful work in China's ancient novels, with different identities and temperament. The essay "Four Classical Novels of Water Margin Painted by Famous Artists" integrates 293 Chinese paintings, which are jointly drawn by 4 1 Chinese painting masters such as Dai Guobang, He Youzhi and Chen Baiyi. All painters have painted vivid life scenes, vivid characters and far-reaching significance.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
In the history of China literature, perhaps no work has attracted so many readers for so long as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. For hundreds of years, she has been handed down from generation to generation by our whole nation. Reading The Romance of The Three Kingdoms has penetrated into every corner of our national life. Famous painters Dai Guobang, Chen Baiyi, Dai Honghai and other 35 painters drew four great classical novels, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and drew 292 Chinese paintings with colored pencils. You painters have different styles, various schools, meticulous brushwork or freehand brushwork, such as flowing water in one go. They have richly displayed the grand war scenes and many characters in the Three Kingdoms period, reached the peak of painting creation in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and also displayed the unique charm of Chinese painting, which is not a treasure of China. In particular, some well-known chapters, such as Taoyuan Jieyi, Fengyi Pavilion, the theory of cooking wine heroes, three visits to the cottage, a thousand battles of Confucianism, borrowing arrows from grass boats, and Meng Huo's seven escapes, are brilliant.
======================================
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is very popular among ancient people in China. Song and Yuan dynasties came to the stage, and Jin and Yuan dynasties performed more than 30 kinds of Three Kingdoms operas. From Yuan Dynasty to Zhinian, the Pinghua of the Three Kingdoms published by Yu's family in Xin 'an came out. At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Luo Guanzhong synthesized folklore, drama and scripts, combined with historical materials such as the History of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou and Notes by Pei Songzhi, and based on his personal understanding of social life, he created the well-known Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The earliest existing edition was published in Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty, commonly known as "Jiajing Edition", with a total of 24 volumes. During the reign of Emperor Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, Mao Zonggang, the father and son of Maureen, collated historical events, added or deleted words, and revised them into the current 120 Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
There are many versions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, mainly including: Ming Hongzhi version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with simple words and simple content; Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a commentary added or deleted by Mao Zonggang in Qing Dynasty, was written in the early years of Kangxi, and it is the most widely circulated book in the society. People's Literature Publishing House reprinted many times.
author
Luo Guanzhong (1330- 1400) was a popular novelist in Ming dynasty. His native place is Taiyuan (now Shanxi) and Qiantang (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang), so he is not sure. According to legend, Luo Guanzhong was a screen guest of Zhang Shicheng, a peasant uprising army at the end of Yuan Dynasty. In addition to the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he also wrote popular novels such as Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties and plays such as Meet the Dragon and Tiger of Zhao Taizu. In addition, quite a few people think that the last thirty chapters of Water Margin are also his works.
-
author
There are three views about the author of Water Margin:
All the books are written by Luo Guanzhong.
Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong wrote it.
Shi Naian wrote the whole novel by himself. This view is the most familiar to everyone.
The earliest statement was put forward before the Ming Dynasty. Some people who support this view think that Shi Naian is a fictional character and does not exist in reality.
People who hold the second view also have the following two opinions:
Some people think that the first seventy chapters of Water Margin were written by Shi Naian, and the last thirty chapters were written by Luo Guanzhong.
The Book of Hundred Rivers, a Confucian scholar in Ming Dynasty, called Water Margin "The Book of Qiantang Shi Naian, edited by Luo Guanzhong". In other words, it was mainly written by Shi Naian and edited by Luo Guanzhong. This view is quite influential in academic circles.
Another view is that Water Margin belongs to cumulative mass creation. Undoubtedly, Shi Naian referred to, used for reference and absorbed a lot of materials in the process of creation, including historical records, notes, some complete novels, opera works or some fragments of them, but Shi Naian's creation cannot be denied.
Shi Naian (1296- 1370), China novelist. The author of Water Margin, one of China's four classical novels. Born in Jiangsu generation, Xinghua baijuchang people. There is some controversy about the correctness of his biographical data. Some people say that there is no such person. The author of Water Margin is controversial. It is verified that the book was not written by Shi Naian at all, but by Luo Guanzhong. In the TV series Water Margin filmed by CCTV, the authors were written as Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong.
-
Academic controversy about the author.
The author of The Journey to the West is generally regarded as Wu Cheng'en of the Ming Dynasty. All The Journey to the West editions published now are signed by Wu Cheng'en. However, since the advent of The Journey to the West, there has been controversy about his author.
The Journey to the West, which was circulated in the Ming Dynasty, has no signature in various versions. In The Journey to the West, the king of Qing Dynasty suggested that The Journey to the West was written by Qiu Chuji in Southern Song Dynasty. After this view was put forward, most scholars in Qing Dynasty agreed with it. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Ji Yun and others began to doubt this theory, thinking that The Journey to the West described the customs and habits of the Ming Dynasty in many places, and Qiu Chuji was a person at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty (a dynasty before the Ming Dynasty); In addition, Huai 'an dialect is used in many places in The Journey to the West, while Qiu Chuji has lived in North China all his life and never lived in Huai 'an. There are also Taoist priests and literati in Ming and Qing Dynasties who think that The Journey to the West is the book of Taoist alchemy.
During the period of the Republic of China, Lu Xun, Hu Shi and others presumed that the author of The Journey to the West was Huai 'an Chengen according to the records of Huai 'an House in the Apocalypse of the Ming Dynasty and the theories of predecessors. This has become a conclusion.
In the late Republic of China, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially after 1980, the research on The Journey to the West's authors has gradually become a hot spot. Some scholars still question Wu Cheng'en's authorship. The reason is that writing Journey to the West has never been mentioned in Wu Cheng'en's poems or friends' words. Secondly, Wu Cheng'en wrote down the fact of The Journey to the West in the Records of Huai 'an Prefecture, which did not indicate that it was romance or official history, but in general, romance and official history were not recorded in local chronicles; Thirdly, The Journey to the West in Wu Cheng'en was classified as a geographical category in the Bibliography of Qianqingtang written by Huang Yuji, a bibliophile in Qing Dynasty. So some people suggest that The Journey to the West was written by Qiu Chuji, or by his disciples. There are also a few mathematicians who believe that The Journey to the West was written by Li Chunfang, the "Prime Minister of Qing Ci" in the Ming Dynasty. However, due to the scarcity and far-fetched arguments, most scholars do not agree with this statement. On the other hand, the argument that Wu Cheng'en is the author of The Journey to the West seems to be more and more convincing. Mainly: First, Wu Cheng'en's personal situation fully conforms to the characteristics of the creators of Journey to the West. Second, it gives a more reasonable and practical explanation to all kinds of questions. Thirdly, the most convincing is the dialect study in The Journey to the West's text. After 1980, there was a breakthrough in this field, which almost irrefutably proved that Wu Cheng'en was the author of The Journey to the West. (For related research, please refer to Liu Xiuye's works and Yan Jingchang's Poetic Rhyme and Journey to the West. )
Therefore, it is generally believed that religion prevailed in the Ming Dynasty, and biographies, legends, other religious legends and folk stories of Master Xuanzang's voyages to the West in the Tang Dynasty were widely circulated in the society. It is in this social and cultural background that Wu Cheng'en created the novel The Journey to the West based on the above biographies, legends and stories.
After Wu Cheng'en's re-conception, organization and compilation, compared with previous biographies, legends, stories and comments, the novel The Journey to the West is not only richer in content, more complete and rigorous in plot, vivid and full in characters, more colorful in imagination and simple in language. More importantly, the novel The Journey to the West has reached an unprecedented height in ideological realm and artistic realm. Can be described as a master.
Wu Cheng'en (about 1504—— about 1582) is a native of Huai 'an, Jiangsu.
Wu Cheng'en didn't get a one-year-old tribute student until he was about 40 years old. He went to Beijing to wait for an official position, but he was not selected. Because his mother was poor, he went to Changxing as a county magistrate and was finally falsely accused. Two years later, he left home. In his later years, he made a living by selling prose and lived nearly 80 years old.
-
Please see: redology.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the question of "Who is the author of A Dream of Red Mansions" once caused a controversy in China academic circles, which continues to this day. Generally speaking, it can be divided into two theories: first, A Dream of Red Mansions was written by Cao Xueqin; Second, the author of A Dream of Red Mansions is another person.
As for A Dream of Red Mansions itself, in the first chapter, it is said that the real author of this story has been unable to be verified, and Cao Xueqin copied it several times, examined it several times and added and deleted it several times. Generally speaking, it is a mainstream view that Cao Xueqin is the author of this book.
Cao Xueqin (? 17 15? 17 16? 1724? 1725? —? 1763? 1764? ), real name Zhan, word,no. Xueqin, Qinpu people. My ancestral home is Liaoyang. The ancestors were originally Han Chinese, but later they entered the flag register, which is the Zhengbai flag. China was a famous writer in the Qing Dynasty. The author of the famous novel A Dream of Red Mansions.
Gao E (about 1738—— about 18 15) was a Manchu writer in Qing Dynasty. The word uncle LAN is a word cloud scholar. He was born in Tieling City, Liaoning Province, and wrote 40 sequels of A Dream of Red Mansions.