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Abstract

The subclassifications in The Book of Han include Records of Literature and Art which contains under the category of Selected Philosophers a group of articles such as Qingshizi and Yu Chu's Romance of the Zhou Dynasty. This group aims to convey “minor teachings”, which contains the understanding of fiction in the Han dynasty, and it can be argued to be the origin of the indigenous concept of fiction in Chinese literary history. From the Han dynasty to the modern era, the term “novel” has consistently been part of the system of knowledge classification and bibliography, referring to a specific type of knowledge and book category. The novels in the category of Selected Philosophers have never deviated from the scope set by the novelists in Records of Literature and Art, and the modern concept of fiction has also not completely departed from the essential criteria confirmed by Records of Literature and Art in the Book of Han. However, the relationship between the concepts of fiction described in Selected Philosophers, the category of fiction in The Masters in The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries and the modern era is not one of mutual definitions, but rather it may be best expressed as that between the origin and its expansion and evolution. After the Sui and Tang dynasties, fiction as a literary genre, continuously transforms and expands on various levels, such as system construction, attribute characteristics and volume size, gradually occupying a broader and completely different territory that departed from the origin.

Keywords

Novelists in Selected Philosophers, knowledge classification, original status, conceptual structure

First Page

183

Last Page

195

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