RESEARCH ON PROTOTYPES OF THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURES OF THE QING MINIATURE NOTES: TAKING MYSTERY NOVELS FROM ZUICHA-TZU BY LI QINGCHEN AS AN EXAMPLE

Abstract

Notes(笔记), a novel style particularly for the classic Chinese(文言) writings of short stories, has peaked in the Qing Dynasty(清代) with two pinnacles: Strange Tales from Liaozhai Studio(聊斋志异) and Yuewei Cottage Notes(阅微草堂笔记), each of which employes disparate narrative paradigms towards to their ghost themed stories. The storytelling manner in Liaozhai is more complicated alike the Tang-Romance(唐代传奇) whereas Yuewei takes a rather straight way parallel to the most classic Supernatural Tales of the Six Dynasties(六朝志怪). Among Liaozhai and Yuewei had Night Chronicles(夜谭随录)& Autumn lantern talks(秋灯丛话), etc., and after Yuewei had Ear Feeding Record(耳食录)& Mystery Novels from Zuicha-tzu(醉茶志怪), all of whose writing-styles and novel-volumes had met the criteria of mini-novels. Especially in the chronologically last Mystery Novels from Zuicha-tzu(醉茶志怪), its shorter Notes only have a dozen words, while the word counts of its longer novels exceeds no more than one thousand as well. Acclaimed by its author Li Qichen(李庆辰), the subtle but profound writing style of the Mystery Novels from Zuicha-tzu is a combination of both Liaozhai and Yuewei, knitting characters, backgrounds and plots of the stories closely together just as one piece. Therefore, this paper, conducting the quantitative-qualitative content-analyzing approach examining the ghostly mini-novels most if not all from Mystery Novels from Zuicha-tzu, aims to deconstruct the prototype categories of the narrative paradigms within the Qing min-novels.