Among the representatives of the villains in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Cao Cao, who ranks at the top of the list.
Today's historical evaluation of Cao Cao is quite positive, saying that he was a great politician, military expert, and literary scholar, and cao Cao's "Guancang Hai" was also selected in the language textbook.
However, no matter how many positive historical evaluations there are, if you want to take Cao Cao to praise people's great talents, you still have to weigh them in your heart.
It is precisely the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that locks the label of "sinister and treacherous" for Cao Cao, and this label has a far-reaching impact, and Cao Cao on the stage of the drama has a white face, and the top is hundreds of years.
In the end, what details have influenced the perception of Cao Cao by future generations.
In Chen Shou's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao is actually benevolent and powerful, and Wang Dao is overbearing. In terms of the use of soldiers, Cao Cao was good at using psychology, often winning more with less, and winning the strong with the weak; in terms of employing people, he advocated meritocracy.
Chen Shou praised Cao Cao as a supernatural talent, who calmed down the chaos of the world and was a great success of his talents. This is very close to our historical assessment of Cao Cao today.
Luo Guanzhong, the author of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", is not a person who distorts history with his eyes closed.
But after all, the theme of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms takes Liu Bei as the orthodoxy and preaches zhaolie's succession to the Han Dynasty, so Cao Cao's greatest evil is to usurp the Han Dynasty. Therefore, the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" fabricated a scene of "Xu Tian Shooting hunting", figurating Cao Cao's plot to usurp the Han Dynasty. And through the mouth of Emperor Xian of Han, Cao Cao's "adultery" and "thief" were characterized.
"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is often described in a relatively general manner, and will not lay out a lot of details, but the 20th time in the novel, "Xu Tian Shooting Hunting", is written in quite detail, and there are mysteries everywhere in the details.
The hunting campaign was set against the backdrop of the emperor's genealogy, establishing That Liu Bei as the uncle of Emperor Xian of Han and elevating Liu Bei's status, while the dictatorial Cao Cao killed Zhao Yan, who impeached him, causing panic among Manchu officials.
There was a detail that suddenly a large deer sprang out, but the emperor was stunned that three arrows had not been shot, so he said to Cao Cao, You come. Cao Cao did not run his horse and bend the bow to chase, but "asked tianzi to carve a bow and a golden arrow, buckle a full shot, and hit the deer's back." "Chasing deer in the Central Plains", the symbolic meaning of Cao Cao's move is already obvious.
Cao Cao's trespassing moves did not stop there, at first, Cao Cao was walking with Tianzi on horseback, eager to compete for the position of the head of the horse. When the golden arrow hit the big deer, the group of ministers thought that the Heavenly Son had shot it, and they all went down to the mountain and shouted "Long live". Cao Cao immediately rode straight out, blocking in front of Tianzi and rushing to receive congratulations.
Emperor Xian of Han, who had been bullied by Cao Cao, returned to the palace and cried and counted Cao Cao down to the empress. Putting him together with dong Zhuo, who was in turmoil, was called a traitor, and that Cao Cao was "monopolizing power in the country" and "sooner or later there will be a different plot", which is to define Cao Cao's sex. Therefore, there was a move to attack Cao Cao with an edict in the back.
The "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" upgraded Cao Cao's sentence in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that "I would rather bear people than others bear me", this time saying: "It is better to teach me to bear the people of the world, and to teach the people of the world to bear me." This sentence, excessive self-centeredness, doomed Cao Cao to be nailed to the pillar of shame of personality stains.
With this sentence as the foundation, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms further uses fictional plots to scandalize Cao Cao.
The change in this sentence adds fuel to the fire, but Cao Cao as an extreme egocentr is placed in opposition to the people of the world.
Cao Cao was wronged? A bit unjust. But what is the bottom line that cannot be touched? What is justice in the hearts of the people? That's it.
The commitment to living with Cao Cao is not the personal will of the author of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but the result of the interaction between history and cultural thought.
In the Song Dynasty, Cheng Zhu Lixue arose, which preached that the Three Principles and Five Constants were "Heavenly Principles", that is, the origin of the world, and the great righteousness of the monarchs and subjects of "Junwei Gang" was greatly promoted.
When Zhu Xi compiled the "Outline of Zizhi Tongjian", he regarded Liu Bei as the orthodox han dynasty, did not recognize the Cao Wei regime, and used Liu Bei's "Emperor Zhaolie" era name in the chronicles, so Cao Cao and Cao Pi became usurpers and Han thieves.
From interpreting the scriptures to revising history, the scholars gradually established a unified understanding and no longer evaluated Cao Cao like the Tang Dynasty. Even if the scholars have generally read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, they must say that Cao Cao is a "Han thief". The flow of official and scholar-doctor thought affected the immediate follow-up of folk storytelling, shadow play, and three points, until the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was written. The Song dynasty and Ming dynasty people called Cao Cao a "thief", and the Qing dynasty people called him "old traitor".
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, under the influence of new ideological trends, the scholar Huang Moses began to reflect, and he once commented that the most fortunate characters in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were like Guan Yu; the most unfortunate was like Cao Cao. He said that Cao Cao's fame was almost juxtaposed with Xia Jie, The King of Shang, the King of Zhou You, and the King of Zhou Li, and became a representative of evil virtue. But whoever commits adultery, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, sinister and murderous people is called "Cao Cao" in society.
From this comment, we can see that the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has indeed had a far-reaching impact on the "smear" of Cao Cao's image. In fact, even today, it is one thing to evaluate Cao Cao with a rational view of history, and it is another thing to watch TV dramas and listen to dramas. #曹操 #