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China
Index
The Tang period also saw a rejection of the ornate, artificial
style of prose developed in the previous period and the emergence
of a simple, direct, and forceful prose based on Han and pre-Han
writing. The primary proponent of this neoclassical style of prose,
which heavily influenced prose writing for the next 800 years, was
Han Yu (768-824), a master essayist and strong advocate of a return
to Confucian orthodoxy.
Vernacular fiction became popular after the fourteenth century,
although it was never esteemed in court circles. Covering a broader
range of subject matter and longer and less highly structured than
literary fiction, vernacular fiction includes a number of
masterpieces. The greatest is the eighteenth-century domestic novel
Hong Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber). A
semiautobiographical work by a scion of a declining gentry family,
Hong Lou Meng has been acknowledged by students of Chinese
fiction to be the masterwork of its type.
Data as of July 1987
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