[1] They represented a new complexity in structure and sophistication in language that helped to establish the novel as a respected form among later popular audiences and erudite critics.
In modern times they live on through popular literature, graphic novels, cartoons and films, television drama, video games, and theme parks.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase were grouped by publishers in the early Qing and promoted as Four Masterworks (Chinese: 四大奇書; pinyin: Sìdàqíshú; lit.
[citation needed] In the late Ming and early Qing, new commercial publishing houses found it profitable to issue novels that claimed specific authors and authentic texts.
[14] Early examples of narrative classics include Bowuzhi, A New Account of the Tales of the World, Soushen Ji, Wenyuan Yinghua, Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang, Taiping Guangji and Yijian Zhi.
[16] Until World War II, the dominant sinological scholarship considered all fiction popular and therefore directly reflective of the creative imagination of the masses.
[17] The American literary critic and sinologist Andrew H. Plaks argues that Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West as well as Jin Ping Mei (not considered one of the four classic novels but discussed by him as one of the four masterworks of the Ming dynasty) collectively constituted a technical breakthrough reflecting new cultural values and intellectual concerns.
Three Kingdoms, he argues, presents a contrast between the ideal—that is, dynastic order—and the reality of political collapse and near-anarchy; Water Margin likewise presents heroic stories from the popular tradition in a way that exposes the heroism as brutal and selfish; Journey to the West is an outwardly serious spiritual quest undercut by comic and sometimes bawdy tone.
Jin Ping Mei is the clearest and most sophisticated example: the action is sometimes grossly sexual, but in the end emphasizes conventional morality.
Traditionally, fiction and drama were not held in high regard in the Chinese and East Asian literary culture,[20] and they were generally not seen as true "literature" by the literati who dominated intellectual life.
The late Ming and early Qing dynasty versions of these novels, however, included commentaries that were printed between the lines, so that the reader saw them as part of the text.
These commentaries interpreted the text in often strained ways, but established critical and aesthetic criteria, modeled on those of poetry and painting, that gave fiction a new legitimacy.
[22] For instance, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is known for its mix of classical prose with folklore and popular narratives,[23] while the Dream of the Red Chamber is known for the use of poetry within its mostly vernacular style.