In the late Qing Dynasty, the national tragedy became more and more serious, especially around the Boxer Rebellion. The decadent Qing government was unprepared for the enemy and could not improve people's livelihood at home. Some progressive intellectuals began to explore the road of saving the country and the people. They use pens to integrate their political opinions into literary works, hoping to convey their ideas of saving the country to the society through their works.
A number of novels with strong political flavor began to appear in the literary world in the late Qing Dynasty. Most of them criticize the shortcomings of the times and expose and condemn all aspects of society. Such works were "condemnation novels" in the late Qing Dynasty.
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The ideological content of the four major novels
1. "Officialdom in the Sky" is a novel by Li Boyuan, a writer in the late Qing Dynasty. He sharply criticized the extremely decadent and dark bureaucracy at the end of feudal society. Officialdom in the Sky is a masterpiece dedicated to exposing the darkness of officialdom. The bureaucratic politics during the collapse of feudal society in China, from the minister of military aircraft to the assistant minor officials, was dissected as a whole, and the bottom of the pen was fully absorbed. Most of the stories of the characters in the book are based on real people.
Second, the book "Twenty Years' Habit" begins with the hero's narrow escape from his father's death and ends in career failure. This novel touches a wide range of social life, from the heads of ministries to unscrupulous people, including corrupt officials, lawyers, evil gentry, profiteers, foreign slaves and comprador, charlatans, foreign talents, prostitutes, hooligans and swindlers, etc., and shows the decay of the increasingly colonial feudal society in China.
3. The Travels of Lao Can, with the travel of a well-traveled doctor and Lao Can as the main line, explores social contradictions in depth, especially in the book, dares to denounce honest officials (cruel officials among honest officials) who are harmed by the country and the people, and pointedly points out that the fatuity of honest officials is often worse than that of corrupt officials. At the same time, the novel has reached a very high level in refining the essence of national traditional culture, philosophy and art of life, female aesthetics and equality, character psychology, musical scenery description and many other aspects.
4. Evil Sea Flower criticizes the incompetence of the feudal ruling class, the drunkenness of the feudal literati and the decay of the feudal system, and shows the requirements and thoughts of the bourgeois democratic revolution, which has a strong spirit of the times and certain political significance. In addition, the novel focuses on the spiritual life and cultural mentality of senior intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty during the historical "great turning point" when the old and the new alternate, reflecting the conflicts and changes of various ideologies and cultures in the Tongguang era and their cultural significance.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Four Denunciation Novels in Late Qing Dynasty
A summary of Baidu academic research on four condemnation novels in the late Qing Dynasty
Baidu encyclopedia-officialdom in the sky
Baidu Encyclopedia —— The Strange Situation Seen in the Past Twenty Years
Baidu Encyclopedia-Travel Notes of Lao Can
Baidu encyclopedia-evil sea flower