The first satirical novel in China's novel history is
The Scholars is an outstanding realistic satire novel by China in Qing Dynasty. Written around 1750, 50 years old, used up Wu's 20 years. It mainly describes the activities and mental outlook of intellectuals, officials and gentry in the late feudal society. Mr. Lu Xun evaluated it as "breaking the brocade collection and merging it into one post." Although it is not huge, it varies from time to time. " Feng and Lu Kanru's Outline of the History of China Literature hold that "there is a great alcohol flaw". Of course, due to the limitations of the times, although the author criticized the dark reality in his book, pinned his ideals on the scholar-officials who were "excellent in character and learning" and preached ancient rites and music, he could not see the way to truly change Confucian scholars and society, which should be criticized. According to Cheng Jinfang's Poems of Love for the People, it can be proved that Wu had cancelled his manuscript when he was forty-nine years old (Spring Sail Collection collected more than ten poems of Love for the People, among which there was a note: "Wu Zi of Quanjiao." The last four sentences of the whole poem say: "A scholar is a scholar, so what is the description?"! I feel sad for the people of Sri Lanka, and I have actually passed it on. " ), but it was not until more than ten years after the author's death that Jin published it for him. This print has been lost today. At present, there are 56 engravings, and the last one was forged by later generations. Although the story of the book has no backbone, there is one center that runs through it, that is, it reflects the poison of the imperial examination system and feudal ethics, and satirizes the extreme hypocrisy and social bad habits caused by greed for fame and fortune. Such ideological content was undoubtedly of great practical and educational significance at that time. Coupled with its accurate, vivid and concise vernacular language, vivid characterization, beautiful and delicate scenery description and wonderful irony, it has also achieved great success in art. The Scholars consists of 56 chapters, which are made up of many vivid stories, all of which are based on real people. The central content of this book is to attack the rigid examination system and the serious social problems caused by it. The Scholars is a model of China's ancient satirical literature. Wu's successful description of feudal literati and imperial examination system in the late feudal period, as well as his vivid description of imperial examination system, ethics and cannibalism made him one of the outstanding writers who criticized realism in the history of China literature. The Scholars not only directly influenced modern condemnation novels, but also profoundly inspired modern satirical literature. Now, The Scholars has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and other languages and has become a world-class literary masterpiece. Some foreign scholars think this is a satirical, pedantic and ostentatious work, but it is a model of the most poetic prose narrative style in the world.