Talk:Classic Chinese Novels

message: Okay, a few things need to be clarified. Mandal, you need to stop insulting others and read up a bit on Chinese history. It is common knowledge throughout Mainland China that Red Chamber is the only novel among the four that was written using the vernacular, and as such was not at the time embraced by the public as a serious piece of literature (some cite this as the reason for Cao Xueqin's demise). Yes, I will admit that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was not written in the same STYLE of Classical Chinese as, say, the Shijing, but one needs to take into account the evolution of the language throughout the several thousand years that it has been in use. Certain syntactic features of Classical Chinese that existed during the period of Late Old Chinese are no longer found in the language of the Ming court; this was inevitable given the increasing divergeance between spoken and written language. The language used for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Water Margin are therefore not in line with the Classical Chinese of the Warring States period (in which there was not a large distinction between spoken and written Chinese), but are nonetheless classified as a form of Classical Chinese (more precisely, Literary Chinese), because a distinction DID exist between the written language and Middle Mandarin. --Taoster —Preceding undated comment added 20:11, 11 May 2006‎ (UTC)
:then would it make sense to add that the others where written in "literary Chinese"?--1698 06:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinction between Classical and Vernacular Chinese 

message: i don't get it. since when did anybody considered 紅樓夢 as one of 4 great classical novels? Is it just the sheer stupidity that's prevalent around wikipedia? Im pretty surprised no Chinese ever come to point this out until now... It's supposed to be 金甁梅. 128.253.43.22 21:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well then, cite your sources. --Plastictv 03:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh. Ok. What has happened here is that I thought when the section was titled "four great classical novels", I automatically assumed it referred to 四大奇書 (now i see it explicitly states it's referring to 四大名著 instead). and you can see in this chinese wiki page  that 四大奇書 counts 金瓶梅 as one of the four. but i guess it all started from my misassumption that the section was referring to 四大奇書 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.187.224.42 (talk) 09:47, 29 July 2007‎ (UTC)
I've made some edits that attempt to explain the 金瓶梅 红楼梦 situation. It doesn't help that the translation of both terms 四大奇书 and 四大名著 is essentially the same. Perhaps this article could be improved by discussing the concept of "Great Books" in Chinese over time, starting with the Four Books. I'm more familiar with mainland Chinese opinions on this subject. It would be interesting to look at the Concept of Four Great Classical Novels from different perspectives. Does the HK/Taiwan/Overseas Chinese community have a different opinion of the FGCN? Is it really primarily a marketing device to sell books? Stevendaniels88 (talk) 09:46, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

text: But many major publishers still provide collections of the 4, so probably yes it has a marketing side...Wikireader20000 (talk) 11:01, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  紅樓 or 金甁 

message: I heard someone consider the book "Creation of the Gods", a.k.a "Fengshen Yanyi" as the fifth book.  Here are the details:
http://www.poisonpie.com/words/others/somewhat/creation/text/intro.html
Do you all think that "this" book should be mentioned as the fifth book, if not hinted at?  Thank you in advance.  Neo Guyver (talk) 00:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: By the way, the meaning of 封神榜 is closer to "List of dubbed Gods', and 封神演义 is closer to "Romance of the dubbed Gods/to dub the Gods'.Take time to study Chinese or use a translation software, though the former is still recommended to allow you to fix it up.Wikireader20000 (talk) 11:10, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about 'Creation of the Gods'? 

message: Editors  and  raise the good point that Shui Hu is translated differently. If it's OK, I will add to the table box Pearl Buck's All Men Are Brothers (still in print), Shapiro's Men of the Marshes, and John Dent-Young and Alex Dent-Young's Mount Liang. I tested it and it doesn't look bad. Cheers in any case. ch (talk) 18:34, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shui Hu ttranslations? 

message: Does anyone object to renaming this article 'Six Classic Novels'? NPalgan2 (talk) 03:43, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The discussion above in "The article's title" did not focus on "Six Classic Novels".  So why was this moved to Six?  This "Six Classic Novels" is a grouping rarely used.  Far less than the "Four".--Sevilledade (talk) 01:12, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved the article to "Classic Chinese Novels" instead of adding the "Six", which is not a familiar grouping.--Sevilledade (talk) 01:42, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  The six form a very distinct grouping. 
* See CT Hsia - the most famous work of scholarship ever written on the Chinese traditional novel https://books.google.com/books?id=VzeEnQEACAAJ
* "The six classic Chinese novels, not in all respects typical of their contemporary literatures, " https://books.google.com/books?id=YIesAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA3
* "The six classic novels have been fortunate to receive much scholarly" https://books.google.com/books?id=FPdRAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1230 
* "The Six Classic Novels " https://books.google.com/books?id=pmNoS2dndKsC&pg=PA232
* " There is another point of similarity between Professor Hsia's book and this volume—both focus primarily on six novels: "  https://books.google.com/books?id=OAPWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA4
* "to form the so-called "six classic novels" https://books.google.com/books?id=xREABAAAQBAJ&pg=PR13
NPalgan2 (talk) 01:55, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

text: I think "classical novels" or "four classical novels" should at least merit a mention, given the fact it is now a popular term (no doubt thanks to Wikipedia). CT Hsia's book is of course very famous, but it isn't exactly as influential in Chinese-language scholarship. DORC (talk) 07:22, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  What are examples of sinological scholarship in English using "classical"? "Classic" seems much more common. NPalgan2 (talk) 17:53, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: "Classic novels" is more common, so I'm not advocating for a title change but for a term inclusion. There are still some works which use the term "classical novels", see , for examples. DORC (talk) 15:13, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed article rename 

message: Aside from the 4-6 novels mentioned in the lede, are there no other classic Chinese novels? What about the ones included in :Category:Chinese classic novels? Timmyshin (talk) 10:33, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  title 

message: I do not agree with the statement that the language of "Red Building Bai Dream" is vernacular, because is the vernacular language of today, which was used in the written language after the May 4th movement. “A Dream of Red Mansions” was written much earlier in the late Qing Dynasty, so the language in it is not the vernacular Chinese we use today. But should be a kind of similar to at that time spoken language （vernacular） writing language. Although there are differences, it can be seen that the language of “A Dream of Red Mansions” is very close to that of colloquialism today, or that these are two different stages in the evolution of spoken language. Qmao12 (talk) 04:02, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The vernacular 

message: The article originally included the Four Classics of the Ming, then was revised a while ago to include two more. The text still included contradictory lists and inclusions, so I reworked, using Hsia's definition that Plaks and Ropp endorsed. Plaks (Note #4) is cited for a claim that I cannot find.ch (talk) 21:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits to make Classic Novels consistent 

message: Editor  has again reverted the lead, again duplicating language that appears below. The grouping of these six novels, as shown in abundant detail above and cited in the article, is standard in English; the reverted lead is hard to read (please see :WP:OPEN). Since the lead paragraph should describe the content of the article, I've turned it back. 
I’ve taken the liberty of copying text from the section "Four or Six Novels" above where Atchom explains their reasoning, because it will be hard to see there and replies even harder. 
Thank you Atchom, for making some points clearly, but it is not clear what you propose and the points are not convincing. Do you want to re-name the article?
Here are Atchom quotes from main points:
Achtom: "You say the Chinese title for the article is "古典小说" but that itself is a relatively recent addition, made by you, I believe."
Reply: The article was moved by consensus in November 2017 HERE after long discussion among a number of editors. Please read that discussion for more detailed arguments.
Achtom: "This article exists in 30-something languages and somehow all of them refer to the grouping of four in their title."
Reply: 
:First, there is no policy that says English Wikipedia title must or should follow others. If I have missed it, please cite it.
:Second, I looked at the articles in other languages, not just the titles, and almost all are stubs or start class; most seem to be taken from the English. 
::*The ZH Wikipedia page is a Start, with no references or sources; it says (incorrectly) that the term "Four Great Classics" was shaped by the People's Literature Publishing House after the Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China. The Japanese article HERE is mainly about the novels in Japanese detective stories.  
::*The French page says “Cet article est partiellement ou en totalité issu de l’article de Wikipédia en anglais intitulé “Four Great Classical Novels.” The Spanish stub is also clearly based on the English, with only four novels. The German article likewise.
::*They and the Vietnamese, Russian, German, Italian, and Swedish say the four Ming works were supplemented by Red Chamber to make five, so they are self-contradictory. That is their problem, not ours.
:So these are not models we need to follow. In any case, they seem to be following the English article.
Atchom: “As a compromise I would be happy to have a section discussing alternative groupings, but given the longstanding focus of this page, the well-known nature of the Four Classics, and the fact that all foreign language versions of this article refer to the Four Novels, I do not think it is appropriate to rewrite it so that it becomes something else.
Reply: We already have a section discussing alternative groupings; the “longstanding focus of this page” is now what was discussed at great length before making the move nearly five years ago; a group of us did not “rewrite” the page, we expanded it. You say “I do not think,” but what you or I or the Man in the Moon “think” is not as important as Guidelines or Policy. 
Atchom: “I suggest this article be split in two as a compromise. But I really don't think it's sustainable that this article continues to mainstay to a grouping which is entirely different than the one covered in every single other Wikipedia..”
Reply: Again, what is the problem that you want to solve? Why is it a problem that the English Wikpedia has richer coverage? Is it purely abstract? You have a point that Four Classics or some variation is a common term. We already have redirects from all the terms mentioned, so readers are well served. This article is still as the “Start” stage, so work should go into it, not a new article. Please read the Guideline :Wikipedia:Content forking.
Hope this helps. ch (talk) 05:03, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Four, Six, or Classic Novels?