Four Great Classical Novels
| Four Great Classical Novels | |||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 四大名著 | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 四大名著 | ||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "Four Great Famous Works" | ||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | sìdà míngzhù |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | sei-daaih mèhng-jeuk |
| Southern Min | |
| Tâi-lô | sù-tāi bîng-tsok |
The Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature are the four novels commonly regarded by Chinese literary criticism to be the greatest and most influential of pre-modern Chinese fiction. Dating from the Ming and Qing dynasties, they are well-known to most Chinese either directly or through their many adaptations to opera and various popular culture media.
They are among the world's longest and oldest novels and are considered to be the pinnacle of China's achievement in classical novels, influencing the creation of many stories, plays, movies, games, and other forms of entertainment throughout countries in East Asia, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
In chronological order, they are:
Chinese fiction, rooted in narrative classics such as Shishuo Xinyu, Sou Shen Ji, Wenyuan Yinghua, Da Tang Xiyu Ji, Youyang Zazu, Taiping Guangji, and official histories, developed into the novel as early as the Song Dynasty. The novel as an extended prose narrative which realistically creates a believable world of its own evolved in China and in Europe from the 14th to 18th centuries, though a little earlier in China. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and were more historically minded. They appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, and relative emphasis on collective behavior and the welfare of the society.
The rise of a money economy and urbanization beginning in the Song era led to a professionalization of entertainment which was further encouraged by the spread of printing, the rise of literacy, and education. In both China and Western Europe, the novel gradually became more autobiographical and serious in exploration of social, moral, and philosophical problems. Chinese fiction of the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty was varied, self-conscious, and experimental. In China, however, there was no counterpart to the 19th-century European explosion of novels. The novels of the Ming and early Qing dynasties represented a pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction.
...
Wikipedia