Abstract:

Scholars under the Qing Dynasty gave high praises on the Ming-Qing novel structure, but later scholars not. The analysis of their differences may expose an important feature of Jin Shengtan's comments on novels, namely, commenting on a novel structure in the writing style of argumentation. In his work, Collected Ancient Articles for Talented Scholars, Jin mainly chose and commented those argumentative articles, paying little attention to their narrative devices. Similarly, Jin Shengtan used to neglect narration in novels and tended to comment on the novel structure with tactics of argumentation. Owing to such an essential feature, it is fundamentally wrong to use Western or modern ideas of narration to explore Jin Shengtan's structural criticisms.

Key words: writing style of argumentation, structure, narration, meaning, rhythm