A Literary Map of Tales of an Ancient Mirror and Its Significance

The studies of Wang Du’s Tales of an Ancient Mirror have mainly focused on the mirror’s image, transitional writing style and political metaphors.If we reread the work from the perspective of the literary map, we can find the literary and cultural information behind the text.Firstly, the comparison of the novel’s literary map with the life tracks of Tang poets can show the geographical overlapping and the southen traveling fashion in Tang Dynasty.And this has provided some evidence for the writing time of this novel.Secondly, comparing this map with Wang Ji’s life experience, we find their overlapping and nonoverlapping tracks, through which we can probe into the writer’s intention for designing such route.Thirdly, both the starting and terminal points are Chang’an City, which has reflected the circular structure and the capital-focused spatial narrative feature of ancient Chinese novels.