Abstract: The illustrations of the novel originated from the "talking and singing show" of the Tang Dynasty. Bianwen ( 变文), Bianxiang (变相) and the illustrations of scripts for story-telling are the visible forms of the early stage, which are repeated and transcended by the illustrations of the novel in late imperial China. From "talking and singing show" in the scene to the text for reading, which is the folding of the narrative of the novel, "illustrations" are inserted in the folds of the narrative text, and bring the evidence to the reader's mind. Story painting and figure painting are the two main types of illustrations, and they can arouse the memory of the "image halo" about the novel, so it's possible for illustrations to escape the text and form an independent narrative. In the pure style of novel, the insertion of the image is a compulsory invasion of symbolic alienation. The "ekphrasis" is the resistance discourse of "speech", the deconstruction of the immersion reading, so the symbolic representation of a novel's illustrations is more of "decoration" rather than of "representation".

Key words: novel, illustration, narrative, image