On the Inserted Poems in Outlaws of the Marsh:The Employment of Special Language in Ancient Novels and Critics on It

Abstract: Novel belongs to the literary style of prose. However, in ancient Chinese novels, there are often some non-prose elements as the embedment of rhythmic and ornate cases which we call special language. Sometimes, they appear in the form of prose, namely, jargons, slangs, dialects and allegorical sayings. Such language not only plays a special role which prose can hardly have in narration and description of novels, but in other times, it can appear in the form of other people’s words which show characters’ personality. What is more interesting is that the above phenomena have druwn extensive attention from the novel critics. Therefore, if we neglect such language, we might have abandoned the study of linguistic art of ancient Chinese novels.