Editing Chinese culture (section)

=== The novel in Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty ===
{{Main|Classic Chinese Novels}}
[[File:Ming Dynasty wood carving books in Tian Yi Chamber colllection.JPG|thumb|Ming dynasty wood carving books in the [[Tian Yi Chamber]] collection]]
Chinese fiction, rooted in narrative classics such as ''[[A New Account of the Tales of the World|Shishuo Xinyu]]'', ''[[Soushen Ji|Sou Shen Ji]]'', ''[[Wenyuan Yinghua]]'', ''[[Great Tang Records on the Western Regions|Da Tang Xiyu Ji]]'', ''[[Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang|Youyang Zazu]]'', ''[[Taiping Guangji]]'', and official histories, developed into the [[novel]] as early as the [[Song dynasty]]. The novel as an extended prose narrative which realistically creates a believable world of its own evolved in China and in Europe from the 14th to 18th centuries, though a little earlier in China. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and were more historically minded. They appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, and relative emphasis on collective behavior and the welfare of the society.<ref>{{Cite book |first= Paul S. |last = Ropp |chapter = The Distinctive Art of Chinese Fiction |pages = 310-311 |title = The Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives |editor-first = Ropp |editor-last = Paul S |location = Berkeley, CA |publisher = University of California Press |year = 1990 |isbn = 0-520-06441-0 }}</ref>
The rise of a money economy and urbanization beginning in the Song era led to a professionalization of entertainment which was further encouraged by the spread of printing, the rise of literacy, and education. In both China and Western Europe, the novel gradually became more autobiographical and serious in exploration of social, moral, and philosophical problems. Chinese fiction of the late [[Ming dynasty]] and early [[Qing dynasty]] was varied, self-conscious, and experimental. In China, however, there was no counterpart to the 19th-century European explosion of novels. The novels of the Ming and early Qing dynasties represented a pinnacle of classic Chinese fiction.  They are well known to most Chinese either directly or through their many adaptations to [[Chinese opera]] and other forms of [[popular culture]], influencing the creation of many stories, plays, movies, games, and other forms of entertainment across other parts of East Asia.{{sfnb|Ropp|1990|p=311}} 

The scholar and literary critic [[Andrew H. Plaks]] argues that ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'', ''[[Water Margin]]'', ''[[Journey to the West]]'', and ''[[Jin Ping Mei|The Golden Lotus]]'' collectively constituted a technical breakthrough reflecting new cultural values and intellectual concerns. Their educated editors, authors, and commentators used the [[Narrative|narrative conventions]] developed from [[Huaben (Chinese novella)|earlier story-tellers]], such as the episodic structure, interspersed songs and folk sayings, or speaking directly to the reader, but they fashioned self-consciously ironic narratives whose seeming familiarity camouflaged a Neo-Confucian moral critique of late Ming decadence. Plaks explores the textual history of the novels (all published after their author's deaths, usually anonymously) and how the ironic and satiric devices of these novels paved the way for the great novels of the 18th century.<ref>Andrew H. Plaks, ''Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel'' (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), esp. pp. 497–98.</ref>  ''[[The Story of the Stone]]'', or ''Dream of the Red Chamber'', which circulated in manuscript until being edited and printed in 1791, is widely considered the greatest of the traditional Chinese novels. <ref>{{citation |title=The Encyclopedia of the Novel |series=''Encyclopedia of Literature'', Vol. 2 |contribution=Paper and Print Technology |last=Shep |first=Sydney J. |publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]] |date=2011 |isbn=978-1-4051-6184-8 |page=596 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bvFSRPx2uokC |access-date=30 October 2017 |archive-date=22 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231022223032/https://books.google.com/books?id=bvFSRPx2uokC |url-status=live }}</ref> ''[[The Scholars (novel)|The Scholars]]'' was published in 1750.{{sfnb|Ropp|1990|p=308}}