Xiang li Na懱 (township civil service) is the basic political and social unit of the Zhou dynasty. Village people were the nobles who occupied certain positions in political and cultural affairs. Village music was employed in social gatherings of local communities. The rites and the music reflect the attempt of the nobles in the Zhou dynasty to make their secular lives refined, poetic and artistic. Drinking rite and shooting rites were regular local activities rich in artistic implications and both showed the characteristics of early drama. Poems and music were at the core of such friendly and harmonious gatherings of local communities. These activities and the notion that “poetry can harmonize people” have exerted profound and far-reaching influences upon the mind of the Chinese people as well as Chinese literature.
Since Sikuquanshu zongmu tiyao was published, it has been generally held that the reason why Gao Qi did not become one of the first-class poets is his early death. Having approached the changes in his creation after he stepped into Ming dynasty, this paper aims to correct the misunderstanding about Gao Qi’s death and points out that he did not make greater achievement because he was deprived of the social environment and the mental state, which is of great significance in the history of literary thought.
The construction of ci poetry at the joint of Ming and Qing dynasties was embodied not only in its composition and respective theories, but in its pattern and rhythm. Ci experts, represented by Wan Shu, characterizes the rise and fall of ci in the Ming dynasty, commented on Shiyu tupu 嬜OYV1 and Xiaoyu pu UxOY?, and set up the norms on ci’s composition. Such studies were mostly seen in the first thirty years of the Qing dynasty, which can be considered as an important sign of the evolution of ci poetry.
The theoretical target and the discourse system of the Qing poetics were gradually established on the basis of extensive criticisms on the Ming poetics. The criticisms made on the Ming poetics in the early Qing dynasty primarily focused on three aspects: common practice of imitation, narrowly restricted outlooks of schools and poetry writing as part of social intercourses. The early Qing poets directed their criticisms at the school of Lixia and the school of Jingling. Thus, the theoretical framework of the early Qing poetics came into being after eliminating the drawbacks of the Ming poetics.
Printed copies are a prerequisite for the realization of fiction reading. Ming popular fiction can be regarded as part of a commercial printing culture, and its spread and reception in the shape of printed copies were strongly influenced by the dissemination media. The involvement of commercial capital during the Ming promoted the large-scale development of private print shops, while the commercialization of print media led to the possibility of mass-published popular fiction. The degree of development of the print media determined the phases and characteristics of the spread and reception of Ming popular fiction. The highly developed commercial traffic and postal services of the Ming expanded the channels through which printed copies of popular fiction could be spread, and the diversification of dissemination methods in society expanded the range of popular fiction reading.
Haishang hua liezhuan is a distinctive marker of the transition from traditional to modern Chinese literature. No matter whether one looks at its choice of subject matter, character depiction, use of language, artistic technique, or even its publication channels, in every aspect this work’s originality shines through, illustrating how Chinese literature, even without the influence of foreign literary trends, also could walk the road towards modernization, because it possessed the innate dynamic towards it. The Haishang hua liezhuan is thus an excellent representative of popular fiction, one which—a quarter century before the emergence of the New Literature Movement—quietly ushered Chinese literature into modernity.
