What were the three stages of the development of ancient Chinese novels? What were their characteristics?
The development of ancient Chinese novels could be divided into three stages: 1. Pre-Qin novels: appeared in the 11th century to the 6th century B.C., mainly describing war, aristocratic politics, and exploration in the context of history books such as the Spring and Autumn Annals and Zuo Zhuan. 2. Qin and Han novels: From the 6th century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D., they mainly describe historical events, political struggles, wars, etc. with historical works such as Records of the Historian and Han Shu as the background. 3. Tang and Song novels: From the 2nd century to the 9th century, they mainly describe social reality such as chivalry, love, marriage, and business in the context of literary works such as Water Margins, Journey to the West, and Dream of the Red Chamber. The characteristics of these three stages were as follows: The characteristics of the pre-Qin novels were that the content was relatively simple, with historical events and legends as the main way of description. The oral tradition was mainly based on biographies and events. 2. The Qin and Han novels were rich in content and began to form certain literary forms, such as the biographies in the Records of the Historian and the novels in the Book of Han. At the same time, a number of works about war, aristocratic politics, and exploration appeared. 3. The Tang and Song novels were the most mature literary forms, with the emergence of prose-based novels, creating a precedent for novel creation with the theme of describing real life. At the same time, the depth of thought and artistic value of literary works had also been greatly improved.