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Criticism In The Golden Lotus

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Abstract: The Golden Lotusnarrated the life of an upstart and represented the daily life of Late-Ming dynasty by the story that happened in Song dynasty and had great status in Chinese literature history. Because that the novel gave a vicious and disastrous portrait of the environment and human suffering of that times, it would be regarded as a tragic novel. However, there was no tragedy according to the western concept of tragedy and The Golden Lotus was not the exception. The paper believes that The Golden Lotus has tragic factors but not is a tragic novel. It discusses the problem in the aspects of Chinese ancient natural environment, the Buddhism influence, the stereotyped narrative pattern of happy ending of Chinese ancient literature …show more content…

(Fang, Y.2007)There is also researcher believes that The Golden Lotus has pluralism topics which includes the worldly affairs, the Buddhist outlook on life and the sex. (Bai, L. 1999) The topic of The Golden Lotus is the reflection and analysis of the human nature especially the evil of human being. (Ma, Z. 2014)There is also the scholar believes that the novel has the topic of the religions of Buddhism and Daoism. The religious topic provide the novel with the morality, the clue of retribution for sin and the special narrative mode. (Wei, C.1999)The papers mentioned above compose the representative opinions about the topic of The Golden …show more content…

The paper On the Social Meaning of The Golden Lotus Tragedy (Zhu, J. 1992), The Discussion on the Tragedy of Classical Novel The Golden Lotus(Dong, F.1991), The Great Tragedy of Society, History and Human Nature: the New Understanding of the Topic of The Golden Lotus(Wang, B.1994) and the paper Understanding the Tragic Consciousness of The Golden Lotus in the Death of Li Pinger(Yang, M.1995)etc all believe that The Golden Lotus is a tragic novel. Although I do not think The Golden Lotus is not the novel of tragedy, the papers mentioned above provide some valuableresearch materials for the article in the following discussion.
2. The Golden Lotus is not tragic novel
2.1 There is no tragedy in ancient Chinese literature history in an accurate sense
There is no tragedy in ancient Chinese literature history in an accurate sense. At least, the theory of the tragedy is proposed by the philosopher Aristotle of ancient Greece based on the development of the drama in his times. If one applies the theory in the analysis of Chinese literature mechanically, he or she would find it is unsuitable for Chinese literature. Chinese literature has the totally different background from that of the western literature, such as in the aspects of culture, religion, politics, economy and history

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