Thirteen New Lectures on "journey to the West
by Chen Hong
About This Novel
"Journey to the West" is a classical masterpiece with long-lasting influence and unique style. On the one hand, it is popular and simple, and contains fairy tale elements that make it suitable for readers of all ages. On the other hand, since its publication, it has been controversial, especially its unique discourse status, which has led to various interpretations. There are two fundamental problems to be solved that are closely related to the interpretation of the work: one is the theme of the work. Readers have always understood "The Uprising in Heaven" as a rebellion against the obsessive rule of Heaven, and there is even a saying that it "reflects the peasant uprising". However, this creates a logical contradiction with the plot of Wukong's conversion later in the article, especially the plot of destroying other monsters after his conversion. Nowadays, the general way to interpret this contradiction is to "divide it into two parts" and let everyone talk about it in his own way. But interpreting a long masterpiece by bypassing contradictions in this way is not a rigorous and persuasive approach after all. The other is the contradiction between the discourse system and narrative attitude of the work. The work uses a lot of inner alchemy discourse in the narrative process, and even copies a lot of Quanzhen Taoist poems and articles. However, the plot of the novel contains many arrangements that are unfavorable or even hostile to Taoism. How to explain this contradictory phenomenon? "Thirteen Lectures on New Theory" was written to solve these two problems. In recent years, the author has published a series of articles on this topic in publications such as "Literary Heritage", "Research on Ming and Qing Novels", and "Journal of Nankai University". From a macro perspective and a micro perspective, based on the new materials discovered, on the basis of the above research results, he further integrated and improved this book.
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