□ Liu Yingtuan
Before Luo Guanzhong wrote the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the story of the "Three Kingdoms" was "already very prosperous" in Song Ming. In the process of the long-term circulation of the "Three Kingdoms" story, people will undoubtedly "self-process" according to their class stance, aesthetic tastes, subjective ideals, and understanding of historical events, and luo Guanzhong "takes Chen Shou's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" as a model", refers to various wild histories, miscellaneous histories, and legends compiled by Pei Songzhi for the "Notes on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and synthesizes them according to their own subject understanding, values, and artistic likes and dislikes, and has achieved this great work of historical interpretation.
"There are very few people in the world who read the history of the Three Kingdoms, but Luo Guanzhong's interpretation of the meaning is well understood." The Qing dynasty Wei Yijie said so. This book "is an excellent popular history" (Hu Shi), "as far as literature is concerned, its character-building skills are indeed first-rate, and later Chinese novelists have drawn nourishment from it" (Jin Yong).
In "< the > of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the late Mr. Dong Jiejie, an expert in the history of opera and a famous dramatist, started from the book "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", arguing that the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was "not created by the hand of Luo Guanzhong in a short period of time", but "after about five hundred years of accumulation", many people's "oral legends" and "decoration processing", Luo Guanzhong is just "collecting various theories, adding, deleting and compiling". The words turned sharply, "Luo Guanzhong spent a lot of energy on this, and he created a lot." Mr. Dong felt, "Today we cannot overdo it to him. ”
"Art is by no means a game, it is a weapon" "Art must never leave society, it should be a reflection of universal social life." Mr. Dong has always attached great importance to the "tendency" of art. In "< the > Of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms", he used philosophical concepts such as "class nature", "people's nature" and "people-oriented" to explore the meaning of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and praised Luo Guanzhong for "using a half-written and half-white style at that time, using the historical facts of the Three Kingdoms era as materials, expressing the will and aspirations of the people at that time through a high degree of artistic skills, and implementing patriotic education that was tied to righteousness and loyalty to the Han nationality." He resented the saying that "orthodoxy is feudal consciousness", arguing that "Liu Bei is indeed a descendant of the Imperial Han Dynasty, so why not borrow the Zun Han to call on the people to complete the cause of unifying the world?" He also said: "Han Shantong, whose surname is Han, and the Song Dynasty's surname is Zhao, actually came to pretend to be an imperial relative... Liu Beizi is righteous, and the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" also uses orthodoxy in this way, which is in line with the wishes of the people, and cannot be said to be feudal consciousness, but on the contrary, it can be considered to be full of patriotic spirit. ”
Mr. Dong is a drama historian and dramatist, and he runs the "stage view with acting as the core" through the study of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". The original intention of "orthodoxy is feudal consciousness" is wrong, but it is a bit to the other extreme.
As a family statement, the "< the > Of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has made a detailed analysis of the achievements and shortcomings of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", even for the more influential social reflection theory is not echoed, but from the background of the story and the originality of the subject matter, on the basis of respecting the originality of the "people's masses", luo Guanzhong's "spent energy" and "creation" are recognized, and then put forward problems that deserve careful discussion and in-depth study, through meticulous analysis and detailed argumentation. Draw relatively fair conclusions. For example, he believes that "the social reality reflected in the whole book of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the essence of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is essentially to write about the internal contradictions of the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty." He further pointed out: "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms truly and profoundly exposed the contradictions between various political groups at that time and reflected the various phenomena of feudal society at that time, which was the purpose of the book "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". ”