Abstract A large number of vernacular propaganda novels appeared in the late Qing Dynasty, characterized by “regarding telling stories as argumentation”. However, the academic circles have not paid enough attention to this kind of novels, and there is a lack of research on its style characteristics. In preaching novels, stories are supposed to be the “case” and “proof of the case”, and the sixteen edicts and the oracles or other “reasons” are regarded as their “viewpoints”, that is, talking stories become a process of argumentation. “Regarding telling the story as argumentation” is the major stylistic feature of preaching novels. The relationship between “stories” and “argumentation” implied in them is: “stories” are considered as methods and means, and “argumentation” is a process of proving their viewpoints, and both of them serve the contents they want to prove. As far as the style and form of the novel is concerned, the language, titles, preambles, and notes in the books indicate that the stories are “the argumentation of the novel”, and the existence of iconic words such as “proven by the story” and “from this story” in the text indicates the “argumentation” function of the story. The propaganda novels are also characterized by “other various literary genres in the text”. Among them, a large number of benevolent ballads and poems, the part of the “story”, are the important feature of the propaganda novels. In terms of their structure, “edicts (oracles)+story argumentation” is the general form, and its sub-pattern is “poetry+comment+story+comment” or “story+comment”. The process of “argumentation by stories” is: introducing the supporting story, and then the signal word “from this story” leads to a summary. It is very similar to the stylistic structure of “viewpoint+factual argumentation+induction and summary” characterized by the argumentative essay. This structure further shows the “proven” nature of the story and the logical structure of “story as evidence” of the whole novel.The early preaching of the edicts of the Ming Dynasty mostly focused on illuminating the edicts and principles. At that time, there had been a tendency to use stories as the auxiliary means to interpreting principles. In the Qing Dynasty, stories were gradually introduced to illustrate edicts. What’s more, their contents greatly increased, and the forms of “an (案, stories)” and “zheng (证,argumentation)” of moral books were adopted. Later, although this kind of stories was still subordinate to the edicts, it was the main body of the new type of text, and it eventually developed into a story-argumentation-based propaganda novel that “takes the story as evidence”. The formation and development of propaganda novels were closely related to the gradual adoption of stories in the edicts, the preaching of popular novels in the Qing Dynasty, and the adoption of the eight-part essays in the Imperial Examinations. The movement of encouraging kindness to others in the late Qing Dynasty became very popular, and the propaganda of the edict became a folk tradition and even a belief. The authors of this kind of literary form persuaded and exhort people to be kind to others, propagating the edicts. Therefore, these novels were much similar to the morality books, and it was also an important cause of the preaching novels. However, it also resulted in the stereotype that this type of novels was regarded as “morality books” rather than novels, which affects the classification of their genre.For ordinary people, the effect of moral education of fiction was far better than that of Confucian classics and history and was regarded as a “fiction education”. Although popular novels had a persuasive function, they were inevitably commercial and entertaining. In addition, knowledge and morality were implied in the stories, which probably resulted in the understanding deviations of the audience. Preaching novels as “morality books” directly illuminated with a clear and straightforward purpose, a certain edict, oracle, or a certain reason. The beginning and the end of the comments and the comments in the story effectively prevented the deviation of understanding the purpose of the story and made the audiences accept the imperial edict and doctrine within the ideal range. Stories used as evidence can realize the functions of morality and entertainment if the stories contain the theme of retribution for good deeds or sins, in combination with the acceptable artistic form of narration, lyric and persuasive rap. In short, the special system of preaching novels fully realized its role of “fiction education”. Thus it was universally recognized and popularized at that time.As most novels of “using the story as evidence” attached importance to reasoning to a certain extent, it led to the relative inadequacy of the tortuous plot and the fullness of the character image.
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