The Formation and Development of the Three Kingdoms Novel Story (VII) - The Birth of the First Of the Four Strange Books in the Qing Dynasty (Part II) ‖ Liu Chang

The Formation and Development of the Novel Story of the Three Kingdoms (VII)

The First of the Four Great Strange Books of the Qing Dynasty was born (Part 2)

Liu Chang

In terms of textual commentary, Mao Zonggang formed a more comprehensive and systematic criticism on the basis of many immature commentaries of the Ming Dynasty. According to its location, its criticism is divided into four categories: review comment, clip batch, eyebrow batch and side batch. In addition to making ideological comments, he also offers some unique insights from a theoretical point of view.

First of all, he believes that "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is a historical novel that combines certain historical facts and ingenuity. There are many differences in the evaluation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms since ancient times: Mao Zonggang's teacher Jin Shengsi said in "Reading the Calligraphy of the Fifth Talent": "If the official government transmits words to slaves, it is only to put the voice of a villain in place of this sentence, in fact, He once added a word"; Hu Shi also had a similar view, believing that the novel "adheres to the story of history too strictly, and the imagination is too little, and the creativity is too weak"; Historian Zhang Xuecheng accused him of "seven points of facts and three points of fiction" in the "Notes of Chengchen", so that the false reality was "misplaced" and "confused". In Mao Zonggang's view, the work of art with historical themes, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", narrates not only "certain things" in history, but also a novel recreated by the writer using artistic "ingenuity", so it cannot be completely measured by "facts and generalities from reality". However, the operation of the "ingenuity" of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms cannot go beyond the general category of "certain things", that is, it can only exert the initiative of its artistic creation on the basis of historical facts, and cannot be imagined and fictionalized arbitrarily like "Water Margin", so the difficulty of creation is extremely great.

Secondly, he believes that the key to the success of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" lies in the shaping of the character image. Mao Zonggang said: "I thought that the "Three Kingdoms" had three wonders, which can be called three absolutes." He analyzed the figures of the Three Kingdoms and pointed out that Zhuge Liang "was the first strange man among the sages of ancient and modern times", Guan Yu "was the first strange person among the famous generals of ancient and modern times", and Cao Cao "was the first strange person among the ancient and modern traitors". Although his statement is biased, it can also be regarded as a major innovation in the history of novel theory criticism, and its influence is far-reaching.

Third, he believes that the artistic structure of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has a perfect overall unity. According to the "Law on Reading the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms", Mao Zonggang pointed out: "The "Records of History" are divided into books by various countries and each person is divided", while the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is "assembled into one piece" and "from the beginning to the end, there is no place to break his book". Moreover, he believes that the structural layout of this novel "in the summary, there are six more six knots" and "where these several paragraphs of text are connected and interacted with each other, or this side rises and the other has ended, or this unfinished and the other rises again, reading it does not see its intermittent traces, and according to it, it has its own rules and regulations." The so-called "summary of the total beginning", that is, the overall structure of the novel to write about the affairs of the Three Kingdoms does not begin and end with the affairs of the Three Kingdoms, but from the end of the Han Dynasty to the beginning of the Jin Dynasty. The so-called "six rises and six knots" refers to the fact that the entire novel revolves around 6 clues: First, the Emperor Xu Xian, starting with Dong Zhuo's abolition and Cao Pi's usurpation; Second, the Western Shu Dynasty, with Chengdu calling the emperor the beginning and the mianzhu descending as the end; Third, the three people of Xu Liu Guan Zhang started with The Taoyuan Knot and the White Emperor Tou Lonely as the Knot; Fourth, Xu Zhuge Liang, starting with the Three Gu Caolu and the six out of the Qi Mountains; Fifth, the state of Wei, with Huang Chu changing the Yuan as the beginning and Sima Shouchan as the end; Sixth, Eastern Wu begins with Sun Jian and Sun Hao. He commented: "What has been passed down through the ages, there are naturally such waves, and naturally there are such layers of folding, so as to become a wonderful text in the world."

Fourth, he believes that the narrative of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is exquisite. Before criticizing the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Mao Zonggang had already attached great importance to the discussion and study of the narrative techniques of literary works. Through meticulous and in-depth analysis and criticism, Mao Zonggang pointed out that the narrative of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" uses the methods of "supplementing brocade" and "even embroidery", "there is the magic of adding silk to supplement brocade and moving needles to even embroidery." Where the method of narrative is made up for what is missing in this article, and the one who has more in the first volume is evenly distributed in the next volume, not only does the previous text not drag on, but also makes the later text not lonely; Not only does it make the past things all miss, but it also makes the future events more colorful. This historian wonderful product also. In addition, he also proposed that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms uses ten narrative techniques such as "reverse", "lining", "several layers of falling", and "uneven history", which have not been discussed before.

Mao Zonggang's unique views on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms not only capture the essence of the original work, but also help to improve the appreciation of the novel by the majority of readers, and contribute valuable critical theories to this novel, filling a gap in the history of Chinese novel research. The "First Kind of Four Strange Books" that he revised the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has also been passed down to this day and is widely popular.

Text reference:

1. "The History of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms < >", by Chen Xianghua.

2. "Reading the Law of the Three Kingdoms", by Mao Zonggang