Research on the Changes of Animal Images in Ancient Chinese Novels
About This Novel
In ancient Chinese novels, animal images mainly appear in content involving myths and legends, records of strange things, and records of folk stories. They have always been the main objects of people's sustenance. Early myths and legends, animal fables, related folk tales, records of legends and monsters derived from myths, etc., Have become the main carriers for animal images to be active in the literary world. With the help of this more popular literary style, animal images display their own cultural characteristics endowed by humans in a more intuitive form than plant images, becoming a kind of cultural animal. The title of this book aims to sort out the changes in animal images in ancient novels, so as to explore the cultural roots hidden behind this gradual rationalization. First of all, the animal images in myths are not only the basis for modern people to look back on their own history, but also the source of strength for us to face the future. They have also become one of the main sources of the generation of fables for later generations. Secondly, the appearance of animal images in legends in later generations mainly has two different branches of development. First, it downgraded the animal gods in mythology into ancestor stories, with obvious traces of evolution and obvious typological characteristics; second, it pioneered the recording of supernatural beings and laid the foundation for the proliferation of missionary stories in later generations. Third, human beings' understanding of animals has always been lingering between objective reality and romantic fantasy. Novels after the Tang Dynasty mostly used animals to construct alien worlds, and then created characters in animal form in foreign worlds. This method of borrowing animals' forms is generally accepted. Works such as "Journey to the West" and "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" have become representative works that consolidate and finalize this type of animal images.
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