Historical Themes In The New Novels

So far, plentiful and substantial achievements have been made on the research and study of history novels both in the theoretical and critical societies. However, most of these research and study aim at a single type of historical novel research and study. Confronted with varies and different kinds of novels, scholars in theoretical field have shown quite different attitudes which can be defined as two types, that is an unbalanced"Hot"and"Cold"attitudes or attention paid on them."Hot"refers to that the scholars pay much more attention to"new history novels". In recent years, a great number of research papers on both Chinese"new history novels"and western new historical theories have been numberless as the sand in the academic circles. We also can say both theoretical and critical circles have really make tremendous contributions to"new history novels"which is in the highest flight in the modern period. On the other hand, along with the history teleplays becoming more and more popular, more and more scholars are paying attention to the voluminous history novels (especially those of Ming and Qing dynasties') composed by Er Yuehe, Tang Haoming, Lingli, etc. Especially after"Zhang juzheng"was awarded the the"Maodun literature award, the ancient history novels have drawn more attention, so a great number of important or valuable academic papers have appeared. But we can see from these researches that the researches on the history novels just rest on individual studies and fewer works appear which is far away from systemization and theorization. And when it comes to the"cold", it refers to the following characteristics: 1. Authors'points of view , to certain degree are still under the control of given political standards. And the visual angle for the research is also very simple. 2. The research methods are singular, and people don't adopt widely applicable modern theory in their research into the historical and the theoretical novels and interpret and comment the literature texts in a certain formal language. 3. The revolutionary novels are interpreted or explained as warlike works, ignore their literary abundances. 4. The impact of globalization and new culture on the historical novels in modern period is ignored.5. Researches are made in a relative narrow eye shot, and research for revolutionary historical novels, ancient historical novels and new historical novels are actually carried out in their own ways, interpreted or analyzed severally, which cause people to fail to make a good use of the three elements to make an effective research for literature works.Therefore,behind the great success of the researches on historical novels in the new period, It appears still in a state of mess and unbalance, different types of novels are interpreted or read differently. Especially different types of the historical novels are isolated or disconnected reasonably and effectively. It seems that the researches in recent years, although blooming in many ways, is still in a disordered and complicated situation. By reading a great number of historical novels in new period and based on the western historical philosophic theories, my paper intends to discus the historical novels in modern period as a whole in a more systemic way, so as to find out the internal regulations of them and reveal their esthetic, cultural and historical values.In the introduction part, I talk about the relationship between Chinese novels in the old days and the history of china, in order to find out how these novels emerged in history. After that, I talk about the development and the definition of the historical novels in the new period, and its rising and declining since the new China was founded. Then I introduce the development of historical novels in the new period. At last I give the definitions to the revolutionary historical novels, ancient and the new period's historical novels and so on.Chapter one, divided into 4 sections, mainly talks about the revolutionary historical novels in the new period. The first section , divided into 3 parts, deals with the development of the revolutionary historical novels under the new political, cultural situations in the new period; The second section generalizes the epic characteristic of the revolutionary novels in the new period. The third section introduces the way how the features of heroes changed during the new period in four aspects. The forth section, from the angle of the so called"modernity", discuses the two keywords of revolutionary historical novels in the new period:"subject"and"revolution".Chapter two, divided into 5 sections, discuses the ancient historical novels. In the first section, I generalize the ancient historical novels written and published before 1980s; In the second section, I talk about the background of the structure of ancient historical novels in the middle of 1980s; The third section mainly generalizes three characteristics of ancient historical novels, that is: the characteristics of nationality, country and epic. The forth section generalizes the power of imaginary in ancient historical novels. The last section talks about the main interest of ancient historical novels. Chapter three, divided into 7 sections, talks about the historical novels in the new period. Section one introduces the western new historical theories, defines the new historical novels. Section two introduces how the historical novels in the new period explain the history. Section three shows how the writers recognize the historical novels in the new period. Section four introduces the human and human nature in the historical novels in the new period. Section five describes the contingency and historical mysticism. Section six introduces the allegoricalization of history. Section seven mainly explains the postmodernist feature of historical novels in the new period.