Ethical Significance of Story Changing in the Fictions of Complicated Legal Cases during the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Emotions and rational reasoning are comprehensively employed to settle a lawsuit in the fictions of complex legal cases where an honest and upright official is the major character. The fictions are quite different from the Western detective novels which often emphasize the modern life style. They actually emphasize the traditional chinese ethical principles of Confucianism. From the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the emphasis on ethics gradually changed from the family standard to political ethics of loyalty. The readers are common people, and they were erasperatsd and disappointed at the decline of the society and the collapse of cultural ethics. The criminal process in the fictions of complex legal cases had gradually changed from the detailed description to narratives which are conducive to the readers’ situational imagination. The transformation of the narrative style of the fictions is helpful to realize poetic justice of morality and ethics.