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161-452: The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray , first published in 1854 and 1855. The Newcomes was published serially over about two years, as Thackeray himself says in one of the novel's final chapters. The novel shows its serial origin: it is very long (an undated but clearly very old edition with tiny type fills 551 pages) and its events occur over many years and in several countries before

322-457: A 48 km (30 mi) long wall around Nanjing , as well as new palaces and government halls. The History of Ming states that as early as 1364 Zhu Yuanzhang had begun drafting a new Confucian law code, the Da Ming Lü , which was completed by 1397 and repeated certain clauses found in the old Tang Code of 653. Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo , which was similar to

483-733: A coup against the Tianshun Emperor out of fear of being next on his purge-list of those who aided him in the Wresting the Gate Incident. Cao's rebel force managed to set fire to the western and eastern gates of the Imperial City (doused by rain during the battle) and killed several leading ministers before his forces were finally cornered and he was forced to commit suicide. While the Yongle Emperor had staged five major offensives north of

644-646: A eunuch servant, hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden right outside the Forbidden City. Seizing opportunity, the Eight Banners crossed the Great Wall after the Ming border general Wu Sangui (1612–1678) opened the gates at Shanhai Pass . This occurred shortly after he learned about the fate of the capital and an army of Li Zicheng marching towards him; weighing his options of alliance, he decided to side with

805-570: A force personally to face the Oirats after a recent Ming defeat; the emperor left the capital and put his half-brother Zhu Qiyu in charge of affairs as temporary regent. On 8 September, Esen routed Zhengtong's army, and Zhengtong was captured—an event known as the Tumu Crisis . The Oirats held the Zhengtong Emperor for ransom. However, this scheme was foiled once the emperor's younger brother assumed

966-411: A form of entertainment. However, one of the earliest English novels, Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe (1719), has elements of the romance, unlike these novels, because of its exotic setting and story of survival in isolation. Crusoe lacks almost all of the elements found in these new novels: wit, a fast narration evolving around a group of young fashionable urban heroes, along with their intrigues,

1127-464: A hero and his life. The adventures led to satirical encounters with the real world with the hero either becoming the pitiable victim or the rogue who exploited the vices of those he met. A second tradition of satirical romances can be traced back to Heinrich Wittenwiler 's Ring ( c.  1410 ) and to François Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), which parodied and satirized heroic romances, and did this mostly by dragging them into

1288-433: A historical work lambasting and belittling his political opponents. The instability at court came right as natural calamity, pestilence, rebellion, and foreign invasion came to a peak. The Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–44) had Wei dismissed from court, which led to Wei's suicide shortly after. The eunuchs built their own social structure, providing and gaining support to their birth clans. Instead of fathers promoting sons, it

1449-432: A low civil service rank. The one great advantage of the lesser functionaries over officials was that officials were periodically rotated and assigned to different regional posts and had to rely on the good service and cooperation of the local lesser functionaries. Eunuchs gained unprecedented power over state affairs during the Ming dynasty. One of the most effective means of control was the secret service stationed in what

1610-470: A major cause of "China's cultural stagnation and economic backwardness." However Benjamin Ellman argues there were some positive features, since the essay form was capable of fostering "abstract thinking, persuasiveness, and prosodic form" and that its elaborate structure discouraged a wandering, unfocused narrative". Scholar-officials who entered civil service through examinations acted as executive officials to

1771-447: A massive influx of South American silver. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang Juzheng 's initially successful reforms proved devastating when

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1932-498: A much larger body of non-ranked personnel called lesser functionaries. They outnumbered officials by four to one; Charles Hucker estimates that they were perhaps as many as 100,000 throughout the empire. These lesser functionaries performed clerical and technical tasks for government agencies. Yet they should not be confused with lowly lictors, runners, and bearers; lesser functionaries were given periodic merit evaluations like officials and after nine years of service might be accepted into

2093-414: A natural way that enhances the story. There are also plenty of Latin , French , Italian and ancient Greek phrases—all untranslated. Colonel Newcome came to be an emblem of virtue for a period, often referred to at the turn of the 20th century. For example, in his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt described his uncle, James Dunwoody Bulloch , as "a veritable Colonel Newcome". Ethel Barrymore

2254-561: A nostalgia for the old romances with their heroism and professed virtue. Jane Barker explicitly advertised her Exilius as "A new Romance", "written after the Manner of Telemachus", in 1715. Robinson Crusoe spoke of his own story as a "romance", though in the preface to the third volume, published in 1720, Defoe attacks all who said "that [...] the Story is feign'd, that the Names are borrow'd, and that it

2415-446: A philosophical and a theological novel, respectively. The tradition of works of fiction that were also philosophical texts continued with Thomas More 's Utopia (1516) and Tommaso Campanella 's City of the Sun (1602). However, the actual tradition of the philosophical novel came into being in the 1740s with new editions of More's work under the title Utopia: or the happy republic;

2576-624: A philosophical romance (1743). Voltaire wrote in this genre in Micromegas: a comic romance, which is a biting satire on philosophy, ignorance, and the self-conceit of mankind (1752, English 1753). His Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759) became central texts of the French Enlightenment and of the modern novel. An example of the experimental novel is Laurence Sterne 's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767), with its rejection of continuous narration. In it

2737-406: A point in a conversation, and the exemplum a priest would insert in a sermon belong into this tradition. Written collections of such stories circulated in a wide range of products from practical compilations of examples designed for the use of clerics to compilations of various stories such as Boccaccio 's Decameron (1354) and Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales (1386–1400). The Decameron

2898-560: A pseudo- bucolic form, and the celebrated L'Astrée , (1610) of Honore d'Urfe (1568–1625), which is the earliest French novel, is properly styled a pastoral . Although its action was, in the main, languid and sentimental, there was a side of the Astree which encouraged that extravagant love of glory, that spirit of " panache", which was now rising to its height in France. That spirit it was which animated Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1603–1674), who

3059-462: A rebellion that sparked a three-year civil war . Under the pretext of rescuing the young Jianwen from corrupting officials, Zhu Di personally led forces in the revolt; the palace in Nanjing was burned to the ground, along with Jianwen himself, his wife, mother, and courtiers. Zhu Di assumed the throne as the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–24); his reign is universally viewed by scholars as a "second founding" of

3220-462: A rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy 's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through

3381-461: A rising literacy rate among the growing population of townspeople, as well as the development of lending libraries. Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) might be said to have given birth to the modern consciousness of the novel in Japan, mixing vernacular dialogue into his humorous and cautionary tales of the pleasure quarters, the so-called Ukiyozōshi (" floating world ") genre. Ihara 's Life of an Amorous Man

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3542-508: A scandalous moral, gallant talk to be imitated, and a brief, concise plot. The new developments did, however, lead to Eliza Haywood 's epic length novel, Love in Excess (1719/20) and to Samuel Richardson 's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1741). Some literary historians date the beginning of the English novel with Richardson's Pamela , rather than Crusoe. The idea of the "rise of the novel" in

3703-483: A separate key. The Mercure Gallant set the fashion in the 1670s. Collections of letters and memoirs appeared, and were filled with the intriguing new subject matter and the epistolary novel grew from this and led to the first full blown example of scandalous fiction in Aphra Behn 's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684/ 1685/ 1687). Before the rise of the literary novel, reading novels had only been

3864-557: A series of lit beacons and signalling stations to allow rapid warning to friendly units of advancing enemy troops. There were many problems—fiscal or other—facing Ming China that started during the reign of the Wanli Emperor (1572–1620). In the beginning of his reign, Wanli surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1572–82) built up an effective network of alliances with senior officials. However, there

4025-672: A single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages. They were often illustrated with crude woodcuts , which sometimes bore no relation to the text. When illustrations were included in chapbooks, they were considered popular prints . The tradition arose in the 16th century, as soon as printed books became affordable, and rose to its height during the 17th and 18th centuries. Many different kinds of ephemera and popular or folk literature were published as chapbooks, such as almanacs , children's literature , folk tales , nursery rhymes , pamphlets , poetry , and political and religious tracts . The term "chapbook" for this type of literature

4186-464: A slowdown in agriculture was produced by the Little Ice Age . The value of silver rapidly increased because of a disruption in the supply of imported silver from Spanish and Portuguese sources, making it impossible for Chinese farmers to pay their taxes. Combined with crop failure, floods, and an epidemic , the dynasty collapsed in 1644 as Li Zicheng's rebel forces entered Beijing. Li then established

4347-553: A vast imperial household, staffed with thousands of eunuchs, who were headed by the Directorate of Palace Attendants. The eunuchs were divided into different directorates in charge of staff surveillance, ceremonial rites, food, utensils, documents, stables, seals, apparel, and so on. The offices were in charge of providing fuel, music, paper, and baths. The bureaus were in charge of weapons, silverwork, laundering, headgear, bronze work, textile manufacture, wineries, and gardens. At times,

4508-442: A very expensive, sophisticated tutoring of the sort that wealthy gentry families specialized in providing their talented sons. In practice, 90 percent of the population was ineligible due to lack of education, but the upper 10 percent had equal chances for moving to the top. To be successful young men had to have extensive, expensive training in classical Chinese, the use of Mandarin in spoken conversation, calligraphy, and had to master

4669-499: Is Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen , published in 1668, Late 17th-century critics looked back on the history of prose fiction, proud of the generic shift that had taken place, leading towards the modern novel/novella. The first perfect works in French were those of Scarron and Madame de La Fayette 's "Spanish history" Zayde (1670). The development finally led to her Princesse de Clèves (1678),

4830-690: Is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love . Originally, romance literature was written in Old French , Anglo-Norman and Occitan , later, in English , Italian and German . During the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose. The shift from verse to prose dates from the early 13th century; for example, the Romance of Flamenca . The Prose Lancelot or Vulgate Cycle also includes passages from that period. This collection indirectly led to Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur of

4991-473: Is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe . They were marvel-filled adventures , often of a knight-errant with heroic qualities, who undertakes a quest , yet it is "the emphasis on heterosexual love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic , which involve heroism." In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there

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5152-540: Is all a Romance; that there never were any such Man or Place". The late 18th century brought an answer with the Romantic Movement's readiness to reclaim the word romance, with the gothic romance , and the historical novels of Walter Scott . Robinson Crusoe now became a "novel" in this period, that is a work of the new realistic fiction created in the 18th century. Sentimental novels relied on emotional responses, and feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and

5313-569: Is considered by some to be one of the earliest "romances" or "novels" of China, and it was influential on later works of fiction in East Asia. Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song dynasty (960–1279) led China to the evolution of oral storytelling, chuanqi and huaben , into long-form multi-volume vernacular fictional novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The European developments of

5474-469: Is considered the first work in this genre. Although Ihara's works were not regarded as high literature at the time because it had been aimed towards and popularized by the chōnin (merchant classes), they became popular and were key to the development and spread of ukiyozōshi . A chapbook is an early type of popular literature printed in early modern Europe . Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered booklets, usually printed on

5635-622: Is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era . Literary historian Ian Watt , in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century. Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books , web novels , and ebooks . Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels . While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in

5796-579: Is underrepresented in modern scholarship. Others note the Ming need for Central Asian horses and the need to maintain the tea-horse trade . The Ming sporadically sent armed forays into Tibet during the 14th century, which the Tibetans successfully resisted. Several scholars point out that unlike the preceding Mongols, the Ming dynasty did not garrison permanent troops in Tibet. The Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620) attempted to reestablish Sino-Tibetan relations in

5957-694: The Huang-Ming Zuxun , a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor , attempted to curtail his uncle's power, prompting the Jingnan campaign , an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing , constructed the Forbidden City , and restored

6118-479: The Roman à clef . Other works could, conversely, claim to be factual histories, yet earn the suspicion that they were wholly invented. A further differentiation was made between private and public history: Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe was, within this pattern, neither a "romance" nor a "novel". It smelled of romance, yet the preface stated that it should most certainly be read as a true private history. The rise of

6279-562: The fubing system of the Tang dynasty (618–907). In 1380 Hongwu had the Chancellor Hu Weiyong executed upon suspicion of a conspiracy plot to overthrow him; after that Hongwu abolished the Chancellery and assumed this role as chief executive and emperor, a precedent mostly followed throughout the Ming period. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established

6440-713: The Censorate , and the Chief Military Commission and personally took charge of the Six Ministries and the regional Five Military Commissions. Thus a whole level of administration was cut out and only partially rebuilt by subsequent rulers. The Grand Secretariat , at the beginning a secretarial institution that assisted the emperor with administrative paperwork, was instituted, but without employing grand counselors, or chancellors . The Hongwu Emperor sent his heir apparent to Shaanxi in 1391 to "tour and soothe" ( xunfu )

6601-478: The Embroidered Uniform Guard , and other peoples such as Jurchens were also prominent. He frequently wrote to Mongol, Japanese, Korean, Jurchen, Tibetan, and Southwest frontier rulers offering advice on their governmental and dynastic policy, and insisted on leaders from these regions visiting the Ming capital for audiences. He resettled 100,000 Mongols into his territory, with many serving as guards in

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6762-667: The Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats . One eunuch, Zheng He , led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa. Hongwu and Yongle emperors had also expanded the empire's rule into Inner Asia . The rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances;

6923-535: The Great Wall against the Mongols and the Oirats, the constant threat of Oirat incursions prompted the Ming authorities to fortify the Great Wall from the late 15th century to the 16th century; nevertheless, John Fairbank notes that "it proved to be a futile military gesture but vividly expressed China's siege mentality." Yet the Great Wall was not meant to be a purely defensive fortification; its towers functioned rather as

7084-634: The Han River to Wuchang , and finally along the northern border of Jiangxi province, Li Zicheng died there in the summer of 1645, thus ending the Shun dynasty . One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food. Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, the Ming were not yet totally destroyed. Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan were all strongholds of Ming resistance. However, there were several pretenders for

7245-606: The Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s. Ming officials declined the offer, but granted him the title of dragon-tiger general for his gesture. Recognizing the weakness of Ming authority in Manchuria at the time, he consolidated power by co-opting or conquering surrounding territories. In 1616 he declared himself Khan and established the Later Jin dynasty in reference to the previous Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty . In 1618 he openly renounced

7406-544: The Jinyiwei , a network of secret police drawn from his own palace guard. Some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule. The Hongwu Emperor issued many edicts forbidding Mongol practices and proclaiming his intention to purify China of barbarian influence. However, he also sought to use the Yuan legacy to legitimize his authority in China and other areas ruled by

7567-514: The Qing dynasty in 1739—states that the Ming established itinerant commanderies overseeing Tibetan administration while also renewing titles of ex-Yuan dynasty officials from Tibet and conferring new princely titles on leaders of Tibetan Buddhist sects . However, Turrell V. Wylie states that censorship in the Mingshi in favor of bolstering the Ming emperor's prestige and reputation at all costs obfuscates

7728-515: The Second Manchu invasion of Korea and forced Joseon to become a Qing tributary. Shortly after, the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty to the Ming dynasty. A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there. In 1634 he was captured by a Ming general and released only on

7889-617: The Shaanxi earthquake of 1556 , occurred during the Jiajing Emperor 's reign, killing approximately 830,000 people. Originally a Ming vassal who officially considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of imperial Ming power, Nurhaci , leader of the Jianzhou Jurchens , unified other Jurchen clans to create a new Manchu ethnic identity. He offered to lead his armies to support Ming and Joseon armies against

8050-594: The Shun dynasty , but it was defeated shortly afterwards by the Manchu -led Eight Banner armies of the Qing dynasty , with the help of the defecting Ming general Wu Sangui . The Mongol -led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Explanations for the demise of the Yuan include institutionalized ethnic discrimination against the Han people that stirred resentment and rebellion, overtaxation of areas hard-hit by inflation , and massive flooding of

8211-652: The Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects. Consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351. The Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus , a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang

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8372-561: The conquest of Tibet by Güshi Khan (1582–1655) in 1642, establishing the Khoshut Khanate . The Hongwu Emperor specified his grandson Zhu Yunwen as his successor, and he assumed the throne as the Jianwen Emperor (r. 1398–1402) after Hongwu's death in 1398. The most powerful of Hongwu's sons, Zhu Di, then the militarily mighty disagreed with this, and soon a political showdown erupted between him and his nephew Jianwen. After Jianwen arrested many of Zhu Di's associates, Zhu Di plotted

8533-425: The "belongs to the commoners", "trivial daily talks" aspect in one of his work. The earliest novels include classical Greek and Latin prose narratives from the first century BC to the second century AD, such as Chariton 's Callirhoe (mid 1st century), which is "arguably the earliest surviving Western novel", as well as Petronius ' Satyricon , Lucian 's True Story , Apuleius ' The Golden Ass , and

8694-642: The 12th century. Ming era examinations were perhaps more difficult to pass since the 1487 requirement of completing the " eight-legged essay ", a departure from basing essays off progressing literary trends. The exams increased in difficulty as the student progressed from the local level, and appropriate titles were accordingly awarded successful applicants. Officials were classified in nine hierarchic grades, each grade divided into two degrees, with ranging salaries (nominally paid in piculs of rice) according to their rank. While provincial graduates who were appointed to office were immediately assigned to low-ranking posts like

8855-410: The 16th and 17th centuries two factors led to the separation of history and fiction. The invention of printing immediately created a new market of comparatively cheap entertainment and knowledge in the form of chapbooks . The more elegant production of this genre by 17th- and 18th-century authors were belles lettres — that is, a market that would be neither low nor academic. The second major development

9016-499: The 16th century, the expansion of European trade —though restricted to islands near Guangzhou such as Macau —spread the Columbian exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and highly productive maize and potatoes , which diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese , Spanish , and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced

9177-401: The 18th century is especially associated with Ian Watt 's influential study The Rise of the Novel (1957). In Watt's conception, a rise in fictional realism during the 18th century came to distinguish the novel from earlier prose narratives. The rising status of the novel in eighteenth century can be seen in the development of philosophical and experimental novels . Philosophical fiction

9338-444: The 19th century, they have only become popular recently. A novel is a long, fictional narrative. The novel in the modern era usually makes use of a literary prose style . The development of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in printing , and the introduction of cheap paper in the 15th century. Several characteristics of a novel might include: East Asian countries, like China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan, use

9499-512: The 19th-century femmes fatales . Ming dynasty#Literature and arts The Ming dynasty ( / m ɪ ŋ / MING ), officially the Great Ming , was an imperial dynasty of China , ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol -led Yuan dynasty . The Ming dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people , the majority ethnic group in China. Although

9660-447: The 5th through 8th centuries. Vasavadatta by Subandhu , Daśakumāracarita and Avantisundarīkathā by Daṇḍin , and Kadambari by Banabhatta are among notable works. These narrative forms were influenced by much older classical Sanskrit plays and Indian classical drama literature, as well as by oral traditions and religious texts. The 7th-century Tang dynasty narrative prose work You Xian Ku written by Zhang Zhuo

9821-563: The Bedchamber, Bureau of Handicrafts, and Office of Staff Surveillance. Starting in the 1420s, eunuchs began taking over these ladies' positions until only the Bureau of Apparel with its four subsidiary offices remained. Hongwu had his eunuchs organized into the Directorate of Palace Attendants, but as eunuch power at court increased, so did their administrative offices, with eventual twelve directorates, four offices, and eight bureaus. The dynasty had

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9982-511: The Fatalist (1773, printed posthumously in 1796). A market of literature in the modern sense of the word, that is a separate market for fiction and poetry, did not exist until the late seventeenth century. All books were sold under the rubric of "History and politicks" in the early 18th century, including pamphlets , memoirs , travel literature , political analysis, serious histories, romances, poetry, and novels. That fictional histories shared

10143-562: The Manchus. The Eight Banners under the Manchu Prince Dorgon (1612–1650) and Wu Sangui approached Beijing after the army sent by Li was destroyed at Shanhaiguan ; the Prince of Shun's army fled the capital on the fourth of June. On 6 June, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor ruler of China. After being forced out of Xi'an by the Qing, chased along

10304-640: The Ming court in 1557 to settle Macau as their permanent trade base in China. Their role in providing silver was gradually surpassed by the Spanish , while even the Dutch challenged them for control of this trade. Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–1665) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from New Spain and Peru across the Pacific through the Philippines towards China, in favor of shipping silver mined in

10465-449: The Ming dynasty since he reversed many of his father's policies. Yongle demoted Nanjing to a secondary capital and in 1403 announced the new capital of China was to be at his power base in Beijing . Construction of a new city there lasted from 1407 to 1420, employing hundreds of thousands of workers daily. At the center was the political node of the Imperial City , and at the center of this

10626-500: The Ming in campaigns against aboriginal tribes. In 1381, the Ming dynasty annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali following the successful effort by Hui Muslim Ming armies to defeat Yuan -loyalist Mongol and Hui Muslim troops holding out in Yunnan province. The Hui troops under General Mu Ying , who was appointed Governor of Yunnan, were resettled in

10787-583: The Ming overlordship and effectively declared war against the Ming with the " Seven Grievances ." In 1636, Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji renamed his dynasty the " Great Qing " at Mukden (modern Shenyang), which had been made their capital in 1625. Hong Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title huangdi , declared the Chongde ("Revering Virtue") era, and changed the ethnic name of his people from "Jurchen" to " Manchu ". In 1636, Banner Armies defeated Joseon during

10948-432: The Ming throne, and their forces were divided. These scattered Ming remnants in southern China after 1644 were collectively designated by 19th-century historians as the Southern Ming . Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last Southern Ming emperor, Zhu Youlang , the Yongli Emperor, was captured and executed. Despite the Ming defeat, smaller loyalist movements continued until

11109-437: The Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes", which focuses on a potential victim, a heroine that has all the modern virtues and who is vulnerable because her low social status and her occupation as servant of a libertine who falls in love with her. She, however, ends in reforming her antagonist. Male heroes adopted the new sentimental character traits in the 1760s. Laurence Sterne 's Yorick ,

11270-531: The Spanish Latin American colonies through Spanish ports. People began hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline. In the 1630s a string of one thousand copper coins equaled an ounce of silver; by 1640 that sum could fetch half an ounce; and, by 1643 only one-third of an ounce. For peasants this meant economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade and crop sales in copper. Historians have debated

11431-527: The Yongle Emperor's reign (1402–1424) and afterwards managed huge imperial workshops, commanded armies, and participated in matters of appointment and promotion of officials. Yongle put 75 eunuchs in charge of foreign policy; they traveled frequently to vassal states including Annam, Mongolia, the Ryukyu Islands, and Tibet and less frequently to farther-flung places like Japan and Nepal. In the later 15th century, however, eunuch envoys generally only traveled to Korea. The eunuchs developed their own bureaucracy that

11592-856: The Yongle Emperor, the Ming Dynasty established the Nurgan Regional Military Commission on the banks of the Amur River , and Yishiha , a eunuch of Haixi Jurchen origin, was ordered to lead an expedition to the mouth of the Amur to pacify the Wild Jurchens. After the death of Yongle Emperor, the Nurgan Regional Military Commission was abolished in 1435, and the Ming court ceased to have substantial activities there, although

11753-464: The Yuan capital Dadu (present-day Beijing ) in 1368. The last Yuan emperor fled north to the upper capital Shangdu , and Zhu declared the founding of the Ming dynasty after razing the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground; the city was renamed Beiping in the same year. Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or "Vastly Martial", as his era name . Hongwu made an immediate effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built

11914-402: The Yuan. He continued policies of the Yuan dynasty such as continued request for Korean concubines and eunuchs, Mongol-style hereditary military institutions, Mongol-style clothing and hats, promoting archery and horseback riding, and having large numbers of Mongols serve in the Ming military. Until the late 16th century Mongols still constituted one-in-three officers serving in capital forces like

12075-793: The aloof emperor and his officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor. There were several military campaigns, which included the Ordos campaign , Bozhou rebellion by the Chiefdom of Bozhou in southwestern China and the Imjin War , during the Wanli Emperor's reign. The Hongwu Emperor forbade eunuchs to learn how to read or engage in politics. Whether or not these restrictions were carried out with absolute success in his reign, eunuchs during

12236-615: The ancient definition of "small talks" merely refers to trivial affairs, trivial facts, and can be different from the Western concept of novel. According to Lu Xun , the word "small talks" first appeared in the works of Zhuang Zhou , which coined such word. Later scholars also provided a similar definition, such as Han dynasty historian Ban Gu , who categorized all the trivial stories and gossips collected by local government magistrates as "small talks". Hồ Nguyên Trừng classified his memoir collection Nam Ông mộng lục as "small talks" clearly with

12397-535: The anonymous Aesop Romance and Alexander Romance . These works were often influenced by oral traditions, such as storytelling and myth-making, and reflected the cultural, social, and political contexts of their time. Afterwards, their style was adapted in later Byzantine novels such as Hysimine and Hysimines by Eustathios Makrembolites Narrative forms were also developed in Classical Sanskrit in India during

12558-507: The appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain . Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press . Miguel de Cervantes , author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605),

12719-546: The author not only addresses readers in his preface but speaks directly to them in his fictional narrative. In addition to Sterne's narrative experiments, there are visual experiments, such as a marbled page, a black page to express sorrow, and a page of lines to show the plot lines of the book. The novel as a whole focuses on the problems of language, with constant regard to John Locke 's theories in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . The rise of

12880-460: The capital. The emperor also strongly advertised the hospitality and role granted to Chinggisid nobles in his court. Hongwu insisted that he was not a rebel, and he attempted to justify his conquest of the other rebel warlords by claiming that he was a Yuan subject and had been divinely-appointed to restore order by crushing rebels. Most Chinese elites did not view the Yuan's Mongol ethnicity as grounds to resist or reject it. Hongwu emphasised that he

13041-537: The capture of the Emperor Yingzong of Ming during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade and connected and fortified the Great Wall into its modern form. Wide-ranging censuses of the entire empire were conducted decennially, but the desire to avoid labor and taxes and the difficulty of storing and reviewing

13202-462: The cities as traders. Cheap printed histories were, in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially popular among apprentices and younger urban readers of both sexes. The early modern market, from the 1530s and 1540s, divided into low chapbooks and high market expensive, fashionable, elegant belles lettres . The Amadis and Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel were important publications with respect to this divide. Both books specifically addressed

13363-545: The colonel returns to India for another several years and while he is there, Clive travels Europe and his love for Ethel waxes and wanes. Dozens of background characters appear, fade, and reappear. The colonel and Clive are only the central figures in The Newcomes , the action of which begins before the colonel's birth. Over several generations the Newcome family rises into wealth and respectability as bankers and begin to marry into

13524-701: The concept of novel as it is understood in the Western world was (and still is) termed as "long length small talk" (長篇小說), novella as "medium length small talk" (中篇小說), and short stories as "short length small talk" (短篇小說). However, in Vietnamese culture, the term 小說 exclusively refers to 長篇小說 (long-length small talk), i.e. standard novel, while different terms are used to refer to novella and short stories. Such terms originated from ancient Chinese classification of literature works into "small talks" (tales of daily life and trivial matters) and "great talks" ("sacred" classic works of great thinkers like Confucius ). In other words,

13685-631: The control imposed upon the Jurchens in Manchuria by the Mongols, yet it created a norm of organization that would ultimately serve as the main instrument for the relations with peoples along the northeast frontiers. By the end of the Hongwu reign, the essentials of a policy toward the Jurchens had taken shape. Most of the inhabitants of Manchuria, except for the Wild Jurchens , were at peace with China. In 1409, under

13846-441: The county graduates, those who passed the palace examination were awarded a jinshi ('presented scholar') degree and assured a high-level position. In 276 years of Ming rule and ninety palace examinations, the number of doctoral degrees granted by passing the palace examinations was 24,874. Ebrey states that "there were only two to four thousand of these jinshi at any given time, on the order of one out of 10,000 adult males." This

14007-589: The court of the Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627) and had his political rivals tortured to death, mostly the vocal critics from the faction of the Donglin Society . He ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor's tombs. His friends and family gained important positions without qualifications. Wei also published

14168-553: The early 1470s. Prose became increasingly attractive because it enabled writers to associate popular stories with serious histories traditionally composed in prose, and could also be more easily translated. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic , satiric or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends , fairy tales , and history, but by about 1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in Don Quixote (1605). Still,

14329-544: The emperor and ministers at times). The Secretariat operated as a coordinating agency, whereas the Six Ministries— Personnel , Revenue , Rites , War , Justice , and Public Works —were direct administrative organs of the state: The imperial household was staffed almost entirely by eunuchs and ladies with their own bureaus. Female servants were organized into the Bureau of Palace Attendance, Bureau of Ceremonies, Bureau of Apparel, Bureau of Foodstuffs, Bureau of

14490-517: The emperor, handling paperwork under the reign of the Yongle Emperor and later appointed as top officials of agencies and Grand Preceptor, a top-ranking, non-functional civil service post, under the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–25). The Grand Secretariat drew its members from the Hanlin Academy and were considered part of the imperial authority, not the ministerial one (hence being at odds with both

14651-492: The emperor. As in prior dynasties, the provincial administrations were monitored by a travelling inspector from the Censorate. Censors had the power to impeach officials on an irregular basis, unlike the senior officials who were to do so only in triennial evaluations of junior officials. Although decentralization of state power within the provinces occurred in the early Ming, the trend of central government officials delegated to

14812-454: The enormous archives at Nanjing hampered accurate figures. Estimates for the late-Ming population vary from 160 to 200 million, but necessary revenues were squeezed out of smaller and smaller numbers of farmers as more disappeared from the official records or "donated" their lands to tax-exempt eunuchs or temples. Haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. By

14973-546: The establishment of the Xi dynasty , while Li's center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan. In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from

15134-466: The exam generally limited participants to those already coming from the landholding class. However, the government did exact provincial quotas while drafting officials. This was an effort to curb monopolization of power by landholding gentry who came from the most prosperous regions, where education was the most advanced. The expansion of the printing industry since Song times enhanced the spread of knowledge and number of potential exam candidates throughout

15295-470: The first novel with what would become characteristic French subject matter. Europe witnessed the generic shift in the titles of works in French published in Holland, which supplied the international market and English publishers exploited the novel/romance controversy in the 1670s and 1680s. Contemporary critics listed the advantages of the new genre: brevity, a lack of ambition to produce epic poetry in prose;

15456-498: The government to properly manage irrigation and flood-control projects caused widespread loss of life and normal civility. The central government, starved of resources, could do very little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic, the Great Plague of 1633–1644 , spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing an unknown but large number of people. The deadliest earthquake of all time,

15617-424: The guards continued to exist in Manchuria. Throughout its existence, the Ming established a total of 384 guards (衛, wei ) and 24 battalions (所, suo ) in Manchuria, but these were probably only nominal offices and did not necessarily imply political control. By the late Ming period, Ming's political presence in Manchuria has declined significantly. The Mingshi —the official history of the Ming dynasty compiled by

15778-575: The hero of the Sentimental Journey (1768) did so with an enormous amount of humour. Oliver Goldsmith 's Vicar of Wakefield (1766) and Henry Mackenzie 's Man of Feeling (1771) produced the far more serious role models. These works inspired a sub - and counterculture of pornographic novels, for which Greek and Latin authors in translations had provided elegant models from the last century. Pornography includes John Cleland 's Fanny Hill (1748), which offered an almost exact reversal of

15939-598: The heroes, it was always hinted that they were well-known public characters of the day in a romantic disguise. Stories of witty cheats were an integral part of the European novella with its tradition of fabliaux . Significant examples include Till Eulenspiegel (1510), Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Grimmelshausen 's Simplicissimus Teutsch (1666–1668) and in England Richard Head 's The English Rogue (1665). The tradition that developed with these titles focused on

16100-439: The insipid, and the foolish, speak according to their own fashion and not with the tongue of the author; the events which befall them are nowhere made exciting at the expense of probability. Just as the stream of life runs on through these volumes, so may it be seen to flow in the world itself by whoever takes up the same position on the bank. Perhaps one of the novel's greatest strengths is that it contains hundreds of references to

16261-430: The intricate poetic requirements of the eight-legged essay. Not only did the traditional gentry dominated the system, they also learned that conservatism and resistance to new ideas was the path to success. For centuries critics had pointed out these problems, but the examination system only became more abstract and less relevant to the needs of China. The consensus of scholars is that the eight-legged essay can be blamed as

16422-632: The kingdoms visited by Zheng He, Yongle proclaimed the Kingdom of Cochin to be its protectorate. The Chinese had sent diplomatic missions over land since the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) and engaged in private overseas trade , but these missions were unprecedented in grandeur and scale. To service seven different tributary voyages, the Nanjing shipyards constructed two thousand vessels from 1403 to 1419, including treasure ships measuring 112 to 134 m (367 to 440 ft) in length and 45 to 54 m (148 to 177 ft) in width. Yongle used woodblock printing to spread Chinese culture. He also used

16583-585: The largest political division was the circuit ( lu 路). However, after the Jurchen invasion in 1127, the Song court established four semi-autonomous regional command systems based on territorial and military units, with a detached service secretariat that would become the provincial administrations of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Copied on the Yuan model, the Ming provincial bureaucracy contained three commissions: one civil, one military, and one for surveillance. Below

16744-453: The last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley and cementing his power in the south. After the dynastic head of the Red Turbans suspiciously died in 1367 while a guest of Zhu, there was no one left who was remotely capable of contesting his march to the throne, and he made his imperial ambitions known by sending an army toward

16905-413: The level of the province ( sheng 省) were prefectures ( fu 府) operating under a prefect ( zhifu 知府), followed by subprefectures ( zhou 州) under a subprefect. The lowest unit was the county ( xian 縣), overseen by a magistrate. Besides the provinces, there were also two large areas that belonged to no province, but were metropolitan areas ( jing 京) attached to Nanjing and Beijing. Departing from

17066-672: The local peoples. After the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty by the Ming dynasty in 1368, Manchuria remained under control of the Mongols of the Northern Yuan dynasty based in Mongolia . Naghachu , a former Yuan official and a Uriankhai general of the Northern Yuan dynasty, won hegemony over the Mongol tribes in Manchuria ( Liaoyang province of the former Yuan dynasty). He grew strong in

17227-532: The low realm of the burlesque. Don Quixote modified the satire of romances: its hero lost contact with reality by reading too many romances in the Amadisian tradition. Other important works of the tradition are Paul Scarron 's Roman Comique (1651–57), the anonymous French Rozelli with its satire on Europe's religions, Alain-René Lesage 's Gil Blas (1715–1735), Henry Fielding 's Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749), and Denis Diderot 's Jacques

17388-634: The main central administrative system generally known as the Three Departments and Six Ministries system, which was instituted by various dynasties since late Han (202 BCE – 220 CE), the Ming administration had only one department, the Secretariat, that controlled the six ministries. Following the execution of the Chancellor Hu Weiyong in 1380, the Hongwu Emperor abolished the Secretariat,

17549-420: The meaning of "trivial facts" rather than the Western definition of novel. Such classification also left a strong legacy in several East Asian interpretations of the Western definition of “novel” at the time when Western literature was first introduced to East Asian countries. For example, Thanh Lãng and Nhất Linh classified the epic poems such as The Tale of Kiều as "novel", while Trần Chánh Chiếu emphasized

17710-597: The military to expand China's borders. This included the brief occupation of Vietnam , from the initial invasion in 1406 until the Ming withdrawal in 1427 as a result of protracted guerrilla warfare led by Lê Lợi , the founder of the Vietnamese Lê dynasty . The Oirat leader Esen Tayisi launched an invasion into Ming China in July 1449. The chief eunuch Wang Zhen encouraged the Zhengtong Emperor (r. 1435–49) to lead

17871-402: The minor aristocracy . A theme that runs throughout the novel is the practice of marrying for money. Herein we find first use of the coined word " capitalism ", as reference to an economic system . Religion is another theme, particularly Methodism . ... Truth is never sacrificed to piquancy. The characters in the 'Newcomes' are not more witty, wise, or farcical than their prototypes; the dull,

18032-417: The modern image of the medieval is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word "medieval" evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and such tropes. The term "novel" originates from the production of short stories, or novella that remained part of a European oral culture of storytelling into the late 19th century. Fairy tales, jokes, and humorous stories designed to make

18193-399: The modern novel as an alternative to the chivalric romance began with the publication of Miguel de Cervantes ' novel Don Quixote : "the first great novel of world literature". It continued with Scarron 's Roman Comique (the first part of which appeared in 1651), whose heroes noted the rivalry between French romances and the new Spanish genre. In Germany an early example of the novel

18354-600: The most influential eunuch in the Directorate of Ceremonial acted as a de facto dictator over the state. Although the imperial household was staffed mostly by eunuchs and palace ladies, there was a civil service office called the Seal Office, which cooperated with eunuch agencies in maintaining imperial seals, tallies, and stamps. There were also civil service offices to oversee the affairs of imperial princes. The Hongwu emperor from 1373 to 1384 staffed his bureaus with officials gathered through recommendations only. After that

18515-501: The new customers of popular histories, rather than readers of belles lettres . The Amadis was a multi–volume fictional history of style, that aroused a debate about style and elegance as it became the first best-seller of popular fiction. On the other hand, Gargantua and Pantagruel , while it adopted the form of modern popular history, in fact satirized that genre's stylistic achievements. The division, between low and high literature, became especially visible with books that appeared on both

18676-422: The north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces, essentially fell apart. Unpaid and unfed, the army was defeated by Li Zicheng—now self-styled as the Prince of Shun —and deserted the capital without much of a fight. On 25 April 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng when the city gates were opened by rebel allies from within. During the turmoil, Chongzhen , the last Ming emperor, accompanied only by

18837-457: The northeast, with forces large enough (numbering hundreds of thousands) to threaten invasion of the newly founded Ming dynasty in order to restore the Mongols to power in China. The Ming decided to defeat him instead of waiting for the Mongols to attack. In 1387 the Ming sent a military campaign to attack Naghachu , which concluded with the surrender of Naghachu and Ming conquest of Manchuria. The early Ming court could not, and did not, aspire to

18998-469: The novel did not occur until after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439, and the rise of the publishing industry over a century later. Long European works continued to be in poetry in the 16th century. The modern European novel is often said to have begun with Don Quixote in 1605. Another important early novel was the French pastoral novel L'Astrée by Honore d'Urfe , published in 1610. Romance or chivalric romance

19159-412: The nuanced history of Sino-Tibetan relations during the Ming era. Modern scholars debate whether the Ming dynasty had sovereignty over Tibet. Some believe it was a relationship of loose suzerainty that was largely cut off when the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) persecuted Buddhism in favor of Daoism at court. Others argue that the significant religious nature of the relationship with Tibetan lamas

19320-464: The palace until the coup against the Jingtai Emperor in 1457 known as the "Wresting the Gate Incident". The former emperor retook the throne under the new era name Tianshun (r. 1457–64). Tianshun proved to be a troubled time and Mongol forces within the Ming military structure continued to be problematic. On 7 August 1461, the Chinese general Cao Qin and his Ming troops of Mongol descent staged

19481-453: The plot is arranged to advance emotions rather than action. The result is a valorization of "fine feeling", displaying the characters as models of refined, sensitive emotional affect. The ability to display such feelings was thought at this time to show character and experience, and to help shape positive social life and relationships. An example of this genre is Samuel Richardson 's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), composed "to cultivate

19642-467: The plot of novels that emphasise virtue. The prostitute Fanny Hill learns to enjoy her work and establishes herself as a free and economically independent individual, in editions one could only expect to buy under the counter. Less virtuous protagonists can also be found in satirical novels, like Richard Head 's English Rogue (1665), that feature brothels, while women authors like Aphra Behn had offered their heroines alternative careers as precursors of

19803-427: The popular and belles lettres markets in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries: low chapbooks included abridgments of books such as Don Quixote . The term "chapbook" is also in use for present-day publications, commonly short, inexpensive booklets. Heroic Romance is a genre of imaginative literature, which flourished in the 17th century, principally in France. The beginnings of modern fiction in France took

19964-529: The popular and educated culture of the time and thus gives a better idea than most contemporary novels of what it was like to live in England then— almost a miniature education in the Victorian era . Thackeray mentions poets, painters, novelists (some of the characters are reading Oliver Twist ) , politics, and other people, events and things both familiar and obscure to the 21st-century reader—and does so in

20125-531: The primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty ), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family —collectively called the Southern Ming —survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor ( r.   1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in

20286-456: The proclamation of the Republic of China . Described as "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history" by Edwin O. Reischauer , John K. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig , the Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the Yuan dynasty, and the thirteen Ming provinces are the precursors of the modern provinces. Throughout the Song dynasty,

20447-553: The provinces as virtual provincial governors began in the 1420s. By the late Ming dynasty, there were central government officials delegated to two or more provinces as supreme commanders and viceroys, a system which reined in the power and influence of the military by the civil establishment. Governmental institutions in China conformed to a similar pattern for some two thousand years, but each dynasty installed special offices and bureaus, reflecting its own particular interests. The Ming administration utilized Grand Secretaries to assist

20608-479: The provinces. For young schoolchildren there were printed multiplication tables and primers for elementary vocabulary; for adult examination candidates there were mass-produced, inexpensive volumes of Confucian classics and successful examination answers. As in earlier periods, the focus of the examination was classical Confucian texts, while the bulk of test material centered on the Four Books outlined by Zhu Xi in

20769-562: The publication of histories that dared not risk an unambiguous assertion of their truth. The literary market-place of the late 17th and early 18th century employed a simple pattern of options whereby fictions could reach out into the sphere of true histories. This permitted its authors to claim they had published fiction, not truth, if they ever faced allegations of libel. Prefaces and title pages of seventeenth and early eighteenth century fiction acknowledged this pattern: histories could claim to be romances, but threaten to relate true events, as in

20930-513: The reader reaches the predictable conclusion. The main part of The Newcomes is set a decade or two after the action of Vanity Fair , and some of the characters in Vanity Fair are mentioned peripherally in The Newcomes . The narrator is Arthur Pendennis, the protagonist of Pendennis . It was illustrated by Richard Doyle , both in literal renderings of the scenes and in symbolic and fanciful depictions of events and characters. The novel tells

21091-468: The region as part of a colonization effort. By the end of the 14th century, some 200,000 military colonists settled some 2,000,000 mu (350,000 acres) of land in what is now Yunnan and Guizhou . Roughly half a million more Chinese settlers came in later periods; these migrations caused a major shift in the ethnic make-up of the region, since formerly more than half of the population were non-Han peoples. Resentment over such massive changes in population and

21252-479: The region; in 1421 the Yongle Emperor commissioned 26 officials to travel the empire and uphold similar investigatory and patrimonial duties. By 1430 these xunfu assignments became institutionalized as " grand coordinators ". Hence, the Censorate was reinstalled and first staffed with investigating censors, later with censors-in-chief. By 1453, the grand coordinators were granted the title vice censor-in-chief or assistant censor-in-chief and were allowed direct access to

21413-448: The resulting government presence and policies sparked more Miao and Yao revolts in 1464 to 1466, which were crushed by an army of 30,000 Ming troops (including 1,000 Mongols) joining the 160,000 local Guangxi . After the scholar and philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529) suppressed another rebellion in the region, he advocated single, unitary administration of Chinese and indigenous ethnic groups in order to bring about sinification of

21574-464: The right to establish a new dynasty . In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang , in the Battle of Lake Poyang , arguably the largest naval battle in history . Known for its ambitious use of fire ships , Zhu's force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650,000-strong. The victory destroyed

21735-473: The same space with academic histories and modern journalism had been criticized by historians since the end of the Middle Ages: fictions were "lies" and therefore hardly justifiable at all. The climate, however, changed in the 1670s. The romance format of the quasi–historical works of Madame d'Aulnoy , César Vichard de Saint-Réal , Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras , and Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer , allowed

21896-453: The scholar-officials who populated the many ranks of bureaucracy were recruited through a rigorous examination system that was initially established by the Sui dynasty (581–618). Theoretically the system of exams allowed anyone to join the ranks of imperial officials (although it was frowned upon for merchants to join); in reality the time and funding needed to support the study in preparation for

22057-414: The scrutiny of recorded evaluation, although they were expected to confess any of their faults. There were over 4,000 school instructors in county and prefectural schools who were subject to evaluations every nine years. The Chief Instructor on the prefectural level was classified as equal to a second-grade county graduate. The Supervisorate of Imperial Instruction oversaw the education of the heir apparent to

22218-581: The story of Colonel Thomas Newcome, a virtuous and upstanding character. It is equally the story of Colonel Newcome's son, Clive, who studies and travels for the purpose of becoming a painter, although the profession is frowned on by some of his relatives and acquaintances—notably Clive's snobbish, backstabbing cousin Barnes Newcome. Colonel Newcome goes out to India for decades, then returns to England where Clive meets his cousin Ethel. After years in England,

22379-414: The style was fresh and plain; the focus was on modern life, and on heroes who were neither good nor bad. The novel's potential to become the medium of urban gossip and scandal fueled the rise of the novel/novella. Stories were offered as allegedly true recent histories, not for the sake of scandal but strictly for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, fictionalized names were used with the true names in

22540-507: The terms that he return to service. The agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li's troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province by 1635. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li— Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647)—had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu , Sichuan , with

22701-426: The throne under the era name Jingtai (r. 1449–57); the Oirats were also repelled once the Jingtai Emperor's confidant and defense minister Yu Qian (1398–1457) gained control of the Ming armed forces. Holding the Zhengtong Emperor in captivity was a useless bargaining chip for the Oirats as long as another sat on his throne, so they released him back into Ming China. The former emperor was placed under house arrest in

22862-408: The throne; this office was headed by a Grand Supervisor of Instruction, who was ranked as first class of grade three. Historians debate whether the examination system expanded or contracted upward social mobility. On the one hand, the exams were graded without regard to a candidate's social background, and were theoretically open to everyone. In actual practice, the successful candidates had years of

23023-456: The validity of the theory that silver shortages caused the downfall of the Ming dynasty. Famines became common in northern China in the early 17th century because of unusually dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season—effects of a larger ecological event now known as the Little Ice Age . Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of

23184-615: The wake of a Mongol-Tibetan alliance initiated in 1578, an alliance which affected the foreign policy of the subsequent Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in their support for the Dalai Lama of the Yellow Hat sect. By the late 16th century, the Mongols proved to be successful armed protectors of the Yellow Hat Dalai Lama after their increasing presence in the Amdo region, culminating in

23345-480: The word 小說 ( variant Traditional Chinese and Shinjitai : 小説 ; Simplified Chinese : 小说 ; Hangeul : 소설 ; Pinyin : xiǎoshuō ; Jyutping : siu syut ; Wugniu : siau-seq 7 ; Peh-oe-ji : sió-soat ; Hepburn : shōsetsu ; Revised : soseol ; Vietnamese : tiểu thuyết ), which literally means "small talks", to refer to works of fiction of whatever length. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures,

23506-441: The word "novel" at the cost of its rival, the romance, remained a Spanish and English phenomenon, and though readers all over Western Europe had welcomed the novel(la) or short history as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century, only the English and the Spanish had openly discredited the romance. But the change of taste was brief and Fénelon's Telemachus [ Les Aventures de Télémaque ] (1699/1700) already exploited

23667-561: Was a compilation of one hundred novelle told by ten people—seven women and three men—fleeing the Black Death by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills, in 1348. The modern distinction between history and fiction did not exist in the early sixteenth century and the grossest improbabilities pervade many historical accounts found in the early modern print market. William Caxton 's 1485 edition of Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur (1471)

23828-538: Was a matter of uncles promoting nephews. The Heishanhui Society in Peking sponsored the temple that conducted rituals for worshiping the memory of Gang Tie, a powerful eunuch of the Yuan dynasty. The Temple became an influential base for highly placed eunuchs, and continued in a somewhat diminished role during the Qing dynasty. During the last years of the Wanli era and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that

23989-447: Was a penniless peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352; he soon gained a reputation after marrying the foster daughter of a rebel commander. In 1356, Zhu's rebel force captured the city of Nanjing , which he would later establish as the capital of the Ming dynasty. With the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus

24150-472: Was centered on a sudden widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: silver. The Portuguese first established trade with China in 1516. Following the Ming Emperor's decision to ban direct trade with Japan, Portuguese traders acted as an intermediary between China and Japan by buying Chinese silks from China and selling it to Japan for silver. After some initial hostilities gained consent from

24311-461: Was coined in the 19th century. The corresponding French and German terms are bibliothèque bleue (blue book) and Volksbuch , respectively. The principal historical subject matter of chapbooks was abridgements of ancient historians, popular medieval histories of knights, stories of comical heroes, religious legends, and collections of jests and fables. The new printed books reached the households of urban citizens and country merchants who visited

24472-536: Was in comparison to the 100,000 shengyuan ('government students'), the lowest tier of graduates, by the 16th century. The maximum tenure in office was nine years, but every three years officials were graded on their performance by senior officials. If they were graded as superior then they were promoted, if graded adequate then they retained their ranks, and if graded inadequate they were demoted one rank. In extreme cases, officials would be dismissed or punished. Only capital officials of grade 4 and above were exempt from

24633-433: Was named after the character in the novel. Novel Murasaki Shikibu 's Tale of Genji , an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. The spread of printed books in China led to

24794-431: Was no one after him skilled enough to maintain the stability of these alliances; officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time Wanli grew tired of court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, preferring to stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials' sight. Scholar-officials lost prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between

24955-498: Was not conquering territory from the Yuan dynasty but rather from the rebel warlords. He used this line of argument to attempt to persuade Yuan loyalists to join his cause. The Ming used the tribute they received from former Yuan vassals as proof that the Ming had taken over the Yuan's legitimacy. Tribute missions were regularly celebrated with music and dance in the Ming court. Hui Muslim troops settled in Changde , Hunan , after serving

25116-405: Was not exactly new. Plato 's dialogues were embedded in fictional narratives and his Republic is an early example of a Utopia . Ibn Tufail 's 12th century Philosophus Autodidacticus with its story of a human outcast surviving on an island, and the 13th century response by Ibn al-Nafis , Theologus Autodidactus are both didactic narrative works that can be thought of as early examples of

25277-448: Was organized parallel to but was not subject to the civil service bureaucracy. Although there were several dictatorial eunuchs throughout the Ming, such as Wang Zhen , Wang Zhi, and Liu Jin , excessive tyrannical eunuch power did not become evident until the 1590s when the Wanli Emperor increased their rights over the civil bureaucracy and granted them power to collect provincial taxes. The eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) dominated

25438-469: Was sold as a true history, though the story unfolded in a series of magical incidents and historical improbabilities. Sir John Mandeville 's Voyages , written in the 14th century, but circulated in printed editions throughout the 18th century, was filled with natural wonders, which were accepted as fact, like the one-footed Ethiopians who use their extremity as an umbrella against the desert sun. Both works eventually came to be viewed as works of fiction. In

25599-491: Was the Forbidden City , the palatial residence of the emperor and his family. By 1553, the Outer City was added to the south, which brought the overall size of Beijing to 6.5 by 7 kilometres (4 by 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles). Beginning in 1405, the Yongle Emperor entrusted his favored eunuch commander Zheng He (1371–1433) as the admiral for a gigantic new fleet of ships designated for international tributary missions . Among

25760-502: Was the first best-seller of modern fiction, the Spanish Amadis de Gaula , by García Montalvo. However, it was not accepted as an example of belles lettres . The Amadis eventually became the archetypical romance, in contrast with the modern novel which began to be developed in the 17th century. Many different genres of literature made their debut during the Edo period in Japan, helped by

25921-460: Was the inventor of what have since been known as the Heroical Romances. In these there was experienced a violent recrudescence of the old medieval elements of romance, the impossible valour devoted to a pursuit of the impossible beauty, but the whole clothed in the language and feeling and atmosphere of the age in which the books were written. In order to give point to the chivalrous actions of

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