ABSTRACT
As detailed above, in the Song and Yuan dynasties the novel was essentially a short huaben; lengthy historical anecdotes were not included in the novel genre. Separate were the historical stories and “critical” tales, the boundary between which was very clear. From the Ming Dynasty onward, the concept of the novel underwent a change – medium and long works began to include novels, “critical” tales and the so-called romances, the demarcation lines between which gradually became blurred; in this process, the huaben came to be called “short novels.” For example, Xie Zhaozhe of the Ming Dynasty includes in his Five Miscellaneous Literary Sketches the full-length novels Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Qian Zeng of the early Qing Dynasty, in his catalog of popular novels titled, Bibliography of So-It-Is Garden the 12 volumes of the Ancient and Modern Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the Reading Notes of the 53rd Year, we find, “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is basically a novel.” Similarly, in the Two Kinds of Essays Jotted Down at the Autumn Rain Temple we read, “The Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties is a novel.” By this time, the term “novel” had taken on a very expanded meaning, so that the concept of the novel was approaching its modern meaning.
