The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

In early March, "Beihai Dragon Sword" serialized in "Suzhou Xundao" finally came to its finale.

This novel was originally one of the prequel series written by the owner of Huanzhu Tower for Shushan Swordsman. This person likes to break chapters. When writing this book, he published several serials in one go, resulting in the plots of each novel being mixed with each other. If it was not good, it was thrown away, so the book originally only had more than 100,000 words of content.

After Wang Wenlong took "North Sea Dragon Sword", he improved the story a lot, at least drew a standard happy point pattern, and handed the outline to Xu Zhonglin, who continued to enrich it. As a result, the original text of more than 100,000 words was deleted twice and increased to more than 300,000 words, with many more characters and plots added.

In fact, the excitement level of this novel is far less than that of "Liancheng Jue", "Di Gong's Case" and "The Legend of Zhen Huan", whether it is the new martial arts novel represented by "Liancheng Jue", or the detective novel represented by "Di Gong's Case", or The palace-fighting romance novels represented by "The Legend of Zhen Huan" are a type of novel that had never been seen before in the Ming Dynasty.

In comparison, "Beihai Dragon Sword" is still slightly less groundbreaking.

However, "Beihai Dragon Sword" is still newer than most novels on the market at this time, and the plot is much more compact. Unlike "Liancheng Jue", "Di Gong'an" and "The Legend of Zhen Huan", which require quite arousing emotions, " The plot of "Beihai Dragon Slayer" does not require much thinking. There are a lot of genius treasures, monsters, monsters, and fighting skills mixed into it. It is constantly exciting, especially the final battle between the heroine Shen Xiu and the thousand-year-old poisonous dragon in Beihai. Each one uses force to defeat the clever one. The big scene was described by Xu Zhonglin, making readers feel comfortable watching it.

Xu Zhonglin even added quite complicated background settings to all the thousand-year poisonous dragons. All the gods and Buddhas of the three religions were involved, and each poisonous dragon was described as terrifying and powerful.

The stronger the opponent, the more exciting the plot is when the heroine Shen Xiu obtains the dragon-slaying sword and kills twenty-three thousand-year-old poisonous dragons in a row.

The original author, Huanzhu Louzhu, has a very strong writing power, and the description is also detailed and appropriate. But Xu Zhonglin felt comfortable writing it at once, just like when he wrote "The Romance of the Gods" and had to write the same pattern ten times. , he couldn't hold back the scene of killing twenty-three thousand-year-old poisonous dragons.

Originally Wang Wenlong asked Xu Zhonglin to finish it in three chapters, but Xu Zhonglin wrote ten chapters. After Wang Wenlong's strong opposition, it was finally cut to five chapters, and she expressed her unwillingness to change a word.

The finale has been released, but it has received an unexpectedly good response. Readers saw the cool part. They actually enjoyed Xu Zhonglin's description of the battle scenes in five consecutive chapters. The five chapters of the finale of "Beihai Dragon Sword" are divided into two issues. "Suzhou Xundao" published that the sales volume of both issues finally exceeded 2,000 copies.

However, when it comes to the ideological connotation, some readers and critics have criticized "Dragon Sword of the North Sea" a lot. Some people have criticized the novel as a farce from beginning to end, without any value. However, many people have also expressed great concern for the book. like.

At this time, Yuan Hongdao had returned to his hometown of Hubei Public Security Bureau and built the "Liulang Pavilion" at Liulang Lake in the south of the Public Security City. He sang poetry and prose with his friends all day long and devoted himself to the study of opera and novels. Yuan Hongdao wrote a special article in Hubei and sent it to a newspaper in Jiangnan for publication:

"The novel "Beihai Dragon Slaughter" has been serialized recently in "Suzhou Xunbao". Although I live in Hubei, I can't help but ask someone to send me a piece of paper and read it every period. There is also a rumor among local literati that I recently heard from Jiangnan Township The gathering of wild race gods actually performed the play of slaying the dragon master, which is evident from its popularity.

However, some critics said that it was too absurd, and that it only killed people in the world and was bloody and unwritten. I think this is the beauty of it.

People may say that novels are also preaching books, and education comes first. However, I think those who want to understand the teachings, why not just read the Four Books and Five Classics? "Beihai Dragon Sword" is popular because it is readable.

I think the readability of the book lies in the four characters of truth, change, interest, and wonder: the word truth is the character. The verbal disputes among the characters in "Beihai" are life and death battles, just like warriors in reality. How can they be artificial in classical Chinese? With this, the spirit is connected and the emotions are dripping; if we talk about changing characters, we use novels about gods and demons and the classics of the three religions in the article, and seek changes in them, or use Taoist verses and Buddhist verses as the names of characters, and use them as magic weapons. Zi's ​​fables are the appearance of the characters, all of which can be seen in ancient books. Those who don't know think it is mysterious, but those who know can also enjoy it...

If a novel can achieve these four characters, its writing will naturally be refined and refined. Not only will the common people like it, but the officials and officials will also be chasing after it. If all popular books are like this, how can we think there are too many of them? "Yuan Hongdao connected "Beihai Dragon Sword" with the four-character pursuit of "true and interesting" in literary writing that he advocated.

Yuan Hongdao's evaluation criteria are also very clear. The quality of literature should not be judged by whether it resembles the ancients. It is not that whoever writes articles that resembles the ancient Chinese literature of the Qin and Han Dynasties is good, but that the article itself is good. He believes that innovation in writing is good. All are worthy of encouragement. Only if the subject matter and content of the article are different from the literati of the past can the author write something different from the ancients. Otherwise, it will just keep letting history repeat itself.

Xu Zhonglin's "North Sea Dragon Sword" is obviously innovative. Although it is not as big as the pioneering martial arts novel, it is not the turn of other novel writers to say bad things about it.

Yuan Hongdao's Xingling school of thought is the mainstream of the new literary trend of this era, and he himself is the number one standard-bearer.

The Xingling School he founded lasted until the middle of the Qing Dynasty during the active historical period, and even had a major influence in modern and modern literary history. Just look at the stamina of this new literary trend to know Yuan Hongdao's influence on the literary world at this time How powerful.

As soon as his review article came out, it really aroused a great response among literati. Instantly, there were many fewer people who said that Xu Zhonglin's novels were not good.

This is not purely due to Yuan Hongdao's public opinion to suppress critics, because at the same time, many people came out to praise Xu Zhonglin's works.

The most recognized angle of praise is the worldview structure of Xu Zhonglin's works. Xu Zhonglin's ability in writing settings is so strong. He also showed all his abilities in "Beihai Dragon Sword". In addition, the original setting of Huanzhu Louzhu was grand enough. In the end, the world view of the entire novel was shaped into a complete and far-reaching one. .

To put it simply, with this worldview in mind, you can easily write dozens of books and support a large number of future generations of authors.

After the serialization of "Beihai Dragon Sword" ended, the next one was "Di Renjie's Lesson Case of Tongtian Demon" written by Wang Wenlong under the pseudonym of the owner of the Hidden Sword Tower.

Who in the Ming Dynasty had ever seen such a strange, mysterious and terrifying novel?

Once this novel was published, it once again became popular.

The use of ancient allusions and Zen stories in "North Sea Dragon Sword" is clever enough, but it can still make people know that the content of the novel is false.

The "Tongtian Demon Lesson Case" directly takes various spirits from the notes of the Tang Dynasty and interprets them, and even expands the description of a blank content in the history books. Those mysterious and strange stories make it difficult to distinguish between true and false, and it is full of immersion.

For a time, readers and critics in Jiangnan were all dumbfounded.

(End of this chapter)