A Dream of Red Mansions, another hot spot in the novel world, is also one of Han Nan's areas of concern. In the lecture hall of Harvard University, he organizes teaching discussions in workshops for teachers and students almost every year. In his view, China's study of A Dream of Red Mansions is similar to that of Shakespeare in the West. Scholars who study Shakespeare will get a treasure if they can find any information related to Shakespeare. This situation is slightly similar to that of Cao Xueqin in China. Therefore, the appearance of "Cao Xue" is worth understanding, and it is a reasonable product of the development of A Dream of Red Mansions to a certain extent. He believes that the so-called "Cao Xue" should be related to A Dream of Red Mansions, because Cao Xueqin involved many of his family histories in his novels, some of which were buried deeply. In this sense, studying Cao Xueqin's family will help people to better understand this novel. However, if you completely leave A Dream of Red Mansions and blindly chase after it, or even forcibly chase it to the Song and Yuan Dynasties or longer, then the significance of studying A Dream of Red Mansions is not so important. As for the study of novels in this period, in the past, people mainly focused on condemnation novels, while romance novels were almost completely ignored. Han Nan cut into this topic by combing and studying "new novels". The concept of "new novel" was put forward by Liang Qichao in 1905, but the creation of "new novel" itself did not start because of Liang Qichao's advocacy. It has been practiced before, and Liang Qichao only grasped this tendency sensitively and advocated it. Han Nan's study of "new novels" begins with the discussion of hating the sea, birds and stones, and worshipping money, and discusses the factors and main characteristics of this tendency at the beginning, revealing the relationship with the development of related works later. At the same time, through the case analysis of romantic dreams, the characteristics of "new novels" are further explained. In Han Nan's view, Romantic Dream is a novel that embodies the basic characteristics of "new novel" earlier. This is not exactly a romantic novel. Although it can be attributed to Lu Xun's so-called "evil novels", it is full of realism and almost no writing. In a sense, Romantic Dream is China's first urban novel, which describes almost all Yangzhou and its active literati. Its appearance is related to Yangzhou's popular culture, and the relationship between Shanghai culture and Yangzhou culture can be discussed in connection with later biographies of flowers on the sea. Brothel culture is a very important aspect of popular culture in China. In the Ming Dynasty, the brothel culture in Nanjing was very developed. By the Qing Dynasty, Yangzhou's economy was unprecedentedly prosperous due to the emergence of a large number of salt merchants, and its cultural features were also transferred. At the end of the romantic dream, there is a very interesting phenomenon that the prostitute, as the protagonist, moved from Yangzhou to Shanghai around 1900. Then, at the turn of the century, does this incident mark the shift of the center of popular culture from Yangzhou to Shanghai? This view of Han Nan is very important, and its method from special to general is also worth learning.
In the rise of China's modern novels, Han Nanduo studied China's novels from the perspective of narratology, because he has a deep foundation in the study of ancient literature and modern literature, and the study of modern literature often shows his unique skill. For example, "the voice of the narrator before the revolution in the novel world" and the word "voice" are hard to imagine using such a noun if they are not narrators who are very familiar with the scripts of ancient novels. Come to think of it, the "sound mouth" is much richer than the "perspective" usually used to study novels, which is embodied in "listening". It is this "voice" that connects the western narrative theory with China's novel tradition.
Scholars who study China's modern literature usually focus on the novel changes after 1898, and regard the novel changes in this period as the derivatives of external influences or political changes. However, Han Nan found that China's modern novels were not derived. On the contrary, the best writers in19th century are creative and practical. It is from modern novel narratology that Han Nan discovered the "personalized narrative" in Wenkang's Biography of Children Heroes. "In China's previous novels, there has never been such a lively, wanton and eloquent narrator!" He praised Flower Moon Scar as "a novel of a famous personalized oral narrator", pointing out that it has many story clues, which are very similar to the legend of Southern Opera, and derive another meaning from the clever juxtaposition of scenes. The chapters of this novel are often independent. Han Nan believes that in this case, "in order to control time, place and conflict, a powerful and aggressive narrator is needed".
Flower Moon Scar was once the most influential novel of China in modern times, which once opened the atmosphere of novels in the early years of the Republic of China. Zheng listed Flower Moon Scar as his favorite novel, ranking above A Dream of Red Mansions. Novelists of the Republic of China, such as Xu Zhenya and Zhang Henshui, all spoke highly of Flower Moon Trace and admitted that its creation was influenced by it. Up to now, Chinese mainland scholars have not been able to study the role of flower and moon marks in the modern transformation of China's novels. Professor Han Nan is the first scholar to discuss the modern significance of Flower and Moon Mark from the perspective of narratology, and has a unique interpretation of Flower and Moon Mark. Chinese mainland scholars have been influenced by Fei Zhengqing's theory of "challenging and fighting" in concept. When studying modern novels, they often focus on the study of external influence, and regard the transformation of modern novels as the influence of translated novels and the product of reaction after external influence. Professor Han Nan pays more attention to Cowen's concept of "discovering history in China". Under the guidance of this idea, he focused on discovering how China's own novel tradition evolved in modern times, how to absorb his own resources and produce new creations. This does not mean rejecting the historical role of external influences. On the contrary, Professor Han Nan explored the external influence on the basis of a large number of excavated materials, which greatly advanced the time for China's novels to accept the external influence. Professor Han Nan found that as early as the 1930s of 19, western missionaries had written novels in Chinese for enlightenment and missionary work. These novels combine China's ancient novels and Christian thoughts, and some of them are aimed at children, which may be the earliest children's novels in China. Exploring the modernity and significance of these China novels has always been neglected by Chinese mainland academic circles. There are two points worthy of attention in Han Nan's scholarship. The first point is his textual research skills. Many of his works are basically textual research, and the topics he chooses are often carefully combed from a large number of first-hand materials. It is because of his discovery and utilization that many documents began to be known to the academic circles. For example, when discussing the origin of Li Daoren's One Step Cloud Gate in Awakening the World, Han Nan made a detailed study of the Ming Dynasty rap literature Cloud Gate Biography from the aspects of version, content and art, and pointed out that this work is a combination of verse and prose. Some essays have distinctive features and are particularly moving in narrative, especially in narrative skills. When telling stories, there should be an audience present, and the ending is similar to that of the Ming Dynasty in many aspects. By comparison, Han Nan pointed out that Li Daoren's One Step Cloud Gate was developed from the Biography of Cloud Gate. Another example is Yue Fu Hong Shan, an anthology of operas in the Ming Dynasty, which points out that the content of this book is opera rather than Tao Zhen, and most of them are orphan books. This discovery not only rediscovered many long-lost materials, but also made an important contribution to the study of China opera history, especially the Ming opera history. However, Han Nan did not do textual research for textual research. For example, he solved the relationship between the appearance of novels and other styles in the history of novels by discussing the relationship between Biography of Cloud Gate and One Step Cloud Gate by Li Daoren, thus providing another possibility for the dissemination and acceptance of works. He applied western narratology and comedy theory to the study of China's novels, which provided a new way of thinking for China readers.
The second point is his study of China's classical novels by using western literary theory. The so-called western literary theory is mainly the research method of narratology. Narratology has a long history in the west, which is involved in Aristotle's masterpiece Poetics. In the 1920s and 1930s, it got further development, and many scholars tried to establish their own theories to study the characters, narrative units and overall structure in novel creation. Since the second half of this century, there have been many schools and theories, among which northrop Frye's theory is very representative. He believes that it is better to measure the character image, that is, the size of the protagonist's behavioral ability, than to measure the nature and type of the work with stories. After summing up Frye's theory, Han Nan divided the novel into a hierarchical sequence. For example, beyond ordinary people and their environment, the protagonist is a god; Beyond ordinary people and his own environment, he is the protagonist in the legend; Transcending ordinary people but limited by their own environment, it is highly imitative and is the protagonist of epic and tragedy; He can't surpass others, nor can he surpass his own environment. He is an ordinary person with low imitation and the protagonist of comedy and realistic novels. And if he is inferior to ordinary people in ability and intelligence, the protagonist is ironic. In The History of China Vernacular Novels, Han Nan borrowed the theories of Rabock, Roman Ingarden, roland barthes and Weneck. Booth, including Frye, and constructed his own analysis outline, that is, the speaker level, focus level, conversation form level, style level, meaning level and. Han Nan consciously reconciled various theories and established his own narrative system, which is a pioneering work in China's classical novel theory. However, he did not completely copy the western literary theory, but made due adjustments according to the actual situation of China's classical novels.
The works of the first edition of the mainland include the following:
1, The Rise of Modern Novels in China, translated by Han Nan and Xu Xia, Shanghai Century Publishing House Group/Shanghai Education Publishing House. Shanghai, May 2004, the first edition was printed 1 time.
2. The Novel of Han Nan China, Patric Hanan, Wang Qiugui, etc. , Peking University Publishing House. Beijing, March 2008, the first edition was printed 1 time.
3. Creating Li Yu, translated by Han Nan and Yang Guanghui, Shanghai Century Publishing House Group/Shanghai Education Publishing House. Shanghai, 20 10, 12, 1st edition, 1 printing.