From Historical Narraitve To Literary Narrative

Chinese and western narrative literature have different origins. Western narrativeliterature had its origin in epic, then developed into “romance” in Middle Ages, andcame to novel in18thand19thcentury. Chinese narrative literature has three sources,that is, myth, philosophical work and historical records, of which historical recordsexert the most influence, because China has long been known for attaching greatimportance to historical research and the historiographer culture enjoys along-standing status. The birth of the concept,“History is more important thanliterature”, makes it possible that Chinese faculty in narrative is first trained anddeveloped in compiling history books. In early China, literature and history were notseparated, and therefore historic works were not unique to history, but they were alsogiving birth to literature, bringing about the possibility and rule of literary narrative,which deeply influences the later literary narrative. Many fundamental elements thathistorical narrative gestates, although changed in form and function after they areadopted by literary narrative, cannot go without connection to the historic works. Inthe criticism of the novels written in Ming and Qing Periods, such traits can bedetected whenever the narrative comes to be marvelous, because Tso Chuan (acommentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals) and Shih Chi(The Book of History)were always quoted as an example.The present thesis, illuminated by narrative theories, Foucault’s DiscourseTheory, Hayden White’s New Historicism theory, esthetics, Literary Hermeneutics,and the Theory of the Reader to Reflect, explore into the evolvement from historicalnarrative to literary narrative, aiming to find out which elements historiography bringsto literary narrative and which changes the elements undergo after adopted by literarynarrative, to uncover and summarize the tradition of Chinese narrative, constructChinese narrative theory, and enrich the world’s narrative study. The first Chapter researches into the magical event in historical works. Earlyhistorical works is pioneering in Chinese narrative history. As it is limited by thesocial development, human’s cognitive competence, etc., the understanding of “beingtangible” and “being void”, and “being true” and “being fantasy” at that time isdifferent from that of later generations. Therefore, the fact that historical workscontain a lot of mythical historical legends, folk stories, fatality, ghosts and gods,catastrophe and good omens, divinations and dream portents has connections with thecultural tradition that history was born from witchcraft and the influx of the historicaldata handed down by mouth. These mythical events first help to develop people’sfictional thinking and faculty, though unconsciously, and then arouse people’s interestin mythical and grotesque events. Chinese ancient novels begin with the ghost storiesand this Yet Odd tendency have long exerted a great influence on the direction ofnarrative literature. It develops from biographical recording and erroneousness in theghost stories of Han and Wei Period to affectation and inquisitiveness in thebiographical works in Tang Period, from the “odd” in the stories of ghosts and gods tothe “odd” in daily life. During Song Dynasty, the Odd Tendency gradually declined,and was gradually replaced by story-teller’s scripts which are born among commonpeople and boast a rich taste of reality.Chapter Two dips into the narrative mechanism of “Chunqiu Writing Style”(Fromthe traditional Confucian view regarding the book Spring and Autumn that describes itas subtle but judgmental: a writing style that has a similar value when decidingorientation), excavating the connotation of the narratology. Firstly, narrative of “theunnarratable”. Using the research results of Robin R. Warhol, a narratologist as asource of reference and Tso Chuan (a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals)a referent text, this thesis classifies the “the unnarratable” contained in Tso Chuan into“the subnarratable”, the antinarratable, and “the paranarratable”, exploring the waysthat Tso Chuan conveys principles of righteousness making use of “the unnarratable”,which include firstly the antinarratable and becomes the hidden principle in choosingthe events in Tso Chuan. If such a principle is violated, that is, the antinarratable isnarrated, contradiction will arise in dominant text, and where the contradiction arises is where rich tenor lies. Secondly, as for the paranarratable, the writer mainly adoptstwo narrative methods, razing and distortion, the latter of which is further divided intotwo genres: one refers to the case in which some information is deliberatelyabbreviated, thus not reported thoroughly and the other means some information isdistorted deliberately, thus misleading readers. It is therefore obvious that Tso Chuancreates in dominant text different distortion, contradiction, margin, etc. to imply richtenor and modify history through various delicate narrative in dominant text. Secondly,from “Chunqiu Writing Style” to “Implicit Narrative”.“Chunqiu Writing Style” hastwo manifestations: one is the choice and narrative of events, which has beendiscussed in the first chapter; the other is the choice of words and expressions, mainlythe choice of appellations and verbs. They have a common characteristic, that is,narrative existing beyond another narrative, namely “implicit narrative”. Criticism onnovels of Ming and Qing Dynasties widely uses “Chunqiu Writing Style” in this sense.Its specific implication in criticism on novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties lies in thatimplicit narrative is richer than dominant narrative and that implicit narrative negatesdominant narrative.Chapter Three studies the narrative rhetoric and narrative grammar that areformed in historical works. Firstly, from principle to rhetoric. The principle ofrecording facts implies “the truth of information”. which inherits the spirit ofinscriptions narrative in Yinshan Period(a historical period in China). But whenhistoriographers want to reproduce history in a series of narrative, and narrate thehistorical events as a complete and believable story, although they still abide by theprinciple of recording facts, this recording facts refers more to “the truth of themeaning of the event”. Historical works are the important source of the Chinesenarrative literature, and born in this cultural tradition, Chinese people are moreinterested in “factual narration” than in “fictive narration”. Therefore, recording factsgradually changes from the principle of historical narrative to a rhetoric strategy of theliterary narrative, and becomes a way to reach the “the truth of textual art”. Theprocess of this change, by way of the ghost stories in Weijin Period, was completed inbiographies in Tang Period. Secondly, preemption culture and the model of “pre-narrative--confirmed”. Pre-narrative, which is seldom found in western novels, iscommon in Chinese traditional novels. It originates in the historical works. Thepre-narrative in Tso-chuan is not flashback, which adopts only a different timesequence. It in fact contains a model of narrative, that is “prediction-action-test”, andthis model is just a production of preemptive cultural in Chunqiu Period. It first onlyrecords the activity of predicting. Tso-chuan not only uses divination, dream omen,and fortune-telling to divine, but also quotes elites’ words to predict, and especiallypredicts from the aspects of “Li”(an ideology laying importance on courtesy towardsothers). If a behavior is in accordance with “Li”, it will bring about success, and viceversa, which is related to the awareness of the humanity in Chunqiu Period. Thismodel of “prediction-test” is historiographer’s deliberate arrangement for the purposeof moral preaching. When the model “prediction-test” is adopted by literature, itgradually loses its function of predicting, but instead becomes a way of enhancingappreciation of literary beauty.Chapter Four exploits into the process in which the discourse inhistoriographic narrative is produced and its development in literary narrative. Firstly,narrative perspective. Historiographer’s narrative perspective is omniscient, but thisomniscience power is limited to the information that can be observed form outside,but useless for the inner life of the characters. But the narrative perspective inhistoriography has mortifications somewhere, making it the herald for versatility inliterary narrative. Manifestation is everywhere: Narrators temporarily focus their eyeson a certain man or a certain thing; the story perspective changes from characters tonarrators incessantly; the narrator and the character temporarily get integrated.Secondly, narrative intervention. In historiography, narrative intervention happensfrom time to time, including explanative intervention and critical intervention, ofwhich, the former is to control “interpretation disseminated” to guarantee theauthority of the narrative in historiography; the latter, exampled by “Junzi Says” and“By Sima Qian”, is to realize its educational function of poetic justice. This apparentintervention has a far-reaching influence to later literature, story-teller’s scripts like“The Ode To Poem”(unofficial translation of”Shi Zanyue”) and “Poem Says”(unofficial translation of Shi Yun), are just its variants. Besides,“Junzi Says”,influenced by tradition of poeticizing to express one’s ambition in Early Qin Period,often quotes poems and criticizes affairs. In Tso Chuan [a commentary on the Springand Autumn Annals], the phrase Junzi Says is usually added to the narrative of anaffair, which is the rudiment of the later narrative model,“expressing one’s ambitionwhen completing an article”. thirdly, narrative structure. The structure ofhistoriography consists of two, i.e. chronological style and biographical style. Theirformation undergoes a long period of time, and becomes the prototype of the laterliterary narrative structure. Chinese traditional novelists’ love knot,“recording eventsaccording to time”, and the novelistic narrative model in biography, are both the resultof being influenced by it. Fourthly, other elements in narrative. Historiographicnarrative is usually shouldered by the narrator, but the author of the historiographyalso uses such elements like characters, style, etc. to help narrate to communicate hisideas, which manifests Chinese ancients’ outstanding narrative wisdom.Chapter Five dips into the way to present characters in historiography and itsinfluence to literary. Its main manifestations are as follows. First, different character,different characterization. Appearance is carelessly dealt with because it has littleimportance to the writing principle of the historiography, poeticizing, exemplifyingand exhorting. Spots of appearance description has following characteristics: differentpeople, different characterization; usually animals listed to show contrast, which hasits origin in fortune telling and ancient witchcraft; almost exclusively found in theevents which are related to physiognomy, using one’s appearance as a clue for his/herfate, foretelling the development of the story, which makes a narrative strategy inliterature. Secondly, the Manichaeism character structure. The aim in writing historyis to publicize and encourage good and condemn evil; the principle is to ignorecharacter’s psychological description. This fact leads to the Manichaeism characterstructure and the simplification of the character’s nature. The flashing character andthe cumulative figures in Tso Chuan [a commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals]typically show few characters, no development, but are very vivid. Successfullycreated characters in the "Historical Records", like Liu Bang, Xiang Yu, etc. are not created by only one article, but the result of using coreferences, and the use ofcoreferences is to distinguish characters’ good from the bad. Chinese traditionalliterature has been greatly influenced by historiography in shaping characters and alsopresents the characteristics of good and evil. Thirdly, from historical figures topossible figures. Take Yanzi for example. Yanzi in Tso Chuan [a commentary on theSpring and Autumn Annals] is studied differently from the one in The Yen Tzu Ch`unCh`iu as far as the way of studying is concerned. Through various ways, the originalfigures’ qualities and character is strengthened, other figures’ characters and thedeification tendency are more vividly described by fabricating events.Chapter Six has a study of the narrative characteristics of miscellaneous historywhich serves as the transition between the Historiographic narrative and literarynarrative—. Firstly, the occurrence and paradigm of fictional narrative in StrategiesOf Warring States. Fiction is the fundamental characteristics that distinguish literarynarrative from historical narrative. The fiction in Strategies of Warring States not onlyshows in masses of ornaments of speech, but there also exists intended-to-prop text（unofficial translation for Nituowen）. Nituowen is purposefully fictive and fictivemethod includes Fuhui (draw wrong conclusions by false analogy), Taokuo(simulating), Fanggai (rephrasing by imitating), Chuoji (editing) andYansheng(deriving). Its fictive method almost covers all fictive genres in historicalnovels and especially new historical novels. Secondly, Wu-Yue Annals is treated asthe origin of the historical novels. It shows vividly the tendency that literaturedepartures from the history. Its main manifestation is that events existence changesfrom valuing truth to valuing fiction, description changes from history to text, andcharacters change from stereotype to personalization.The concluding parts summarizes Chinese literary narrative theory whichoriginates from historical works in four aspects. Firstly; the educational purpose ofpublicizing and encouraging good and condemning evil entailed in the historiographymakes Chinese narrative which begins from historiography and western narrativewhich finds source in Epic different, and decides Chinese narrative thinking, narrativestrategy, and characters’ image, which, after being adopted by literary narrative, will change a bit in form. But at the same time its function will change from beingeducational to being aesthetic. Secondly, historiography is principled by factrecording in narrative, which helps to raise Chinese people’s great interest in narratingthe fact, and makes Chinese later literature treat “factual account” as the highestpursuit. Thirdly, historiography made its first appearance in Early Qin Period and itsspecific cultural background of the time contributes to the formation of some specialnarrative tendency and narrative grammar. Fourthly, miscellaneous HistoricalBiography serves as the significant transition in the development from historicalnarrative to literary narrative, and shows the pattern that literature is beginning to beactive in historical works and the trend that literature will be separated from historicalworks.