The "literary tale in the Tang and Song Dynasties" refers to embryonic form of short novels popular among the common people in the Tang and Song Dynasties in ancient China. Boasting complicated plots, structural integrity, beautiful writing, and vivid description, novels of this style have not only delicate and vivid description of the details, but also excellent psychological portrait. As for the characterization, a few words can contribute to the creation of distinctive persons. Diverse writing subject matters come up with chivalrous stories, ghost stories, historical stories, love stories, and so on, among which love, the eternal theme, dominates the largest number of novels, with the greatest impact on the future generations.

The "literary tale in the Tang and Song Dynasties" has been known as the legendary style by later generations, because these stories have bizarre and complicated plots, beautiful and elegant writing, with strong flavor of myth, carrying best wishes and ideals of the people at that time.

The legendary tales in the Tang Dynasty are mostly fictional stories, which give full play to the imagination of writers, who created vivid and distinct characters in the story; while the legendary tales in the Song Dynasty are mostly documentary stories with a unique way of writing. These tales are important bridges for the transition to classical Chinese novels in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and they are a very important part in the history of Chinese literature development.

The literary tale in the Tang and Song Dynasties is a wonderful work in the Chinese literature, the most beautiful part in the history of Chinese novel. As a literary heritage, it is an important source of classical Chinese novels, nourishing the creation of novels, Chinese operas, and other literature types in the following generations.