Chapter 6 Section 1 A Bunch of Strange Flowers in the Art Garden of the Tang Dynasty——Legend of Tang Dynasty

Legend of Tang is a short story in classical Chinese of the Tang Dynasty.Most of its contents are strange people and strange things.Later generations will call it Tang Chuanqi.Legend of Tang was developed on the basis of Zhiguai.Legends flourished in the middle of the Tang Dynasty, and ghosts flourished alone in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.Legends thrive in turbulent times, and legends are born in the peak period of my country's feudal society.Zhiguai searched for oddities and hunted for oddities, and exalted spirit monsters. Although Tang Chuanqi was also touched with strangeness, it was not far from reality, and there was absolutely no absurdity.The author of Zhiguai regards the strangeness as a fact, and the author did not intend to engage in literary and artistic creation, while the people of Tang Dynasty "intentionally made it a novel", falsified and exaggerated, and operated in a miserable manner.Zhiguai is the embryonic form of novels, while legends are already real short stories in classical Chinese.The characters of Zhiguai are relatively simple, while the characters of legends are more gorgeous.Zhiguai is short in length, while Legend is longer in length, and the story is complete, incorporating the author's experience of life and his attitude towards life.The Tang Dynasty was an era of mature poetry, and most of the authors of Tang legends were poets. The gorgeous language, rich lyrical color, lingering sentiment and romantic plot of Tang legends are not unrelated to this.Just as Lu Xun said: "Gods, immortals, ghosts, and monsters can be driven at will; the writing style is fine and tortuous, and it is criticized by those who advocate simplicity; ; and the author often deliberately shows the fiction of this deed, in order to see his imagination."

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