Abstract
Through the nationwide Morality Advocating Campaign, the Qing government brought novels into cultural management, which had a profound influence on the creation and dissemination of the novel. In such a political and cultural ecology, censership and banning of novels, which had formed an important part of the social Morality Advocating Campaign, became a top- down, national cultural conscious action in Qing Dynasty. On the one hand, in order to enhance the effect of advocating morality, some“moralist scholars”intentionally fictionized the moral-instruction books. On the other hand, some novelists consciously utilized popular novels to implement persuasion in order to cooperate with the official morality advocating campaign. As a result, their novels were strongly tinged by the elements of moral-instruction books. Similar to the Morality Advocating Campaign, many popular novels in Qing Dynasty utilized ordinary people's ethics for their end, and their artistic purport was also quite consistent with the campaign's.
Keywords
morality advocating campaign in Qing Dynasty, censored novels, the tendency of fictionalization of moral books, strengthening the moral education function of novels
First Page
93
Last Page
104
Recommended Citation
Chen, Caixun. 2021. "On the Relationship between the Morality Advocating Campaign in the Qing Dynasty and Popular Novels." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 41, (1): pp.93-104. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol41/iss1/9
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