A Dream of Red Mansions is a novel with the style of chapters and chapters in ancient China, also known as The Story of the Stone. It is listed as the first of the four classical novels in China, and is generally believed to be written by Cao Xueqin, a writer in the Qing Dynasty. The novel is based on the rise and fall of Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue.

From the perspective of Jia Baoyu, a rich boy, this paper describes the lives of a group of boudoir beauties whose manners and knowledge are beyond the needs of men, and shows the true beauty and tragedy of human nature, which can be said to be an epic that shows the beauty of women in all directions.

The novel encourages itself with the theme of "talking about love and recording things", only follows its logic, gets rid of the old conventions, is fresh and unique, and has achieved extraordinary artistic achievements. The special brushwork of "the truth is hidden and the village tells lies" has opened the brains of later readers and speculated for a long time. Later generations formed an outstanding school-redology around the study of reading A Dream of Red Mansions.

2, The Journey to the West Author: Wu Cheng'en

The Journey to the West is the first romantic novel with chapters and sections in ancient China. There are hundreds of The Journey to the West published in Ming Dynasty, and there is no author's signature. Wu et al., a scholar in Qing Dynasty, first proposed that The Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng'en in Ming Dynasty.

The appearance of The Journey to the West opened up a new category of ghost novels. The ingenious combination of well-meaning satire, bitter satire and serious criticism in the book directly affects the development of satirical novels. So The Journey to the West is the pinnacle of ancient romance novels. In the history of world literature, it is also a masterpiece of romanticism and a pioneer of magical realism.

3. Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of China's classical Four Great Classical Novels, is China's first chapter-by-chapter historical romance novel. Its full name is Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, written by Luo Guanzhong, a famous novelist in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. There are several versions of the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms, such as Jiajing Renwu Edition. By the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Mao Zonggang had rearranged the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, revised the wording and changed the poems.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms describes the history of nearly a hundred years from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the beginning of the Western Jin Dynasty, mainly describing the war, telling the story of the warlord melee in the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the political and military struggle between Wei, Shu and Wu, and finally Sima Yan unified the three countries and established the Jin Dynasty. It reflects the transformation of various social struggles and contradictions during the Three Kingdoms period, summarizes the historical changes of this era, and shapes a group of heroes of the Three Kingdoms.

4. The Water Margin by Shi Naian.

The Water Margin is one of China's four classical novels. It is a chapter-by-chapter novel with the Sung River Uprising as the main story background at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, and it belongs to a heroic legend in genre. The author or editor is generally regarded as Shi Naian, and most of the existing periodicals have one or two people, Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong.

Outlaws of the Marsh is the first novel in the history of China that eulogizes the peasant uprising in ancient vernacular. Taking the rebel army led by Song Jiang as the main theme, through a series of vivid stories of Liangshan heroes' resistance to oppression and heroic struggle, the decay and cruelty of the ruling class in the late Northern Song Dynasty were exposed, and the sharp social contradictions and the cruel reality of "officials forcing the people to rebel" at that time were exposed.

Extended data

The origin of the name "Four Great Classical Novels"

Wang Shizhen, a famous literary critic and leader of the "Last Seven Scholars" in the Ming Dynasty, first put forward the word "Four Musts", but by "Four Musts" he meant Historical Records, Zhuangzi, The Water Margin and The West Chamber. After Wang Shizhen, Feng Menglong also put forward the idea of "Four Musts".

He refers to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, The Journey to the West and Jin Ping Mei. In the early Qing Dynasty, Li Yu prefaced the four wonders (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) in The Drunken Hall: "Mr. Yizhou used to have four wonders in the universe, such as Historical Records, South China, Water Margin and The West Chamber.

Feng Youlong also has four fantastic books, Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Jin Ping Mei. The two men have different opinions. Stupidity refers to the strangeness of books. The Water Margin is a novelist, different from classics and history. The West Chamber is lyrical, which is different from the novel. Today, we will match its strangeness from its kind, so Feng said it is near. "

Baidu Encyclopedia-Four Classic Novels