Research On "Four Words Of History"

The 12 volumes of the Qing Dynasty poet Ge Zhen's "Poems on History" and the 12 volumes of Cao Quan's "Annotation of the Four-Character Poems on History" are two works with close relationship and obvious difference.The former is original and the latter is supplement."Poems on History" is a collection of poems on history with four-character rhyme as the writing form and historical events as the content.The creation of a poem on history in four characters did not begin with Ge Zhen.As early as the Six Dynasties,some single poem on history has appeared.During the Tang Dynasty,Sima Zhen devoted himself to the singing about "Historical Records",and created 130 four-character poems on history.In the late Ming Dynasty,Zhao Nanxing' s "Rhymes of the History" was published.The 2 volumes four-character poems included the descriptions of the historical events of the Han Dynasties,the Three Kingdoms,the Jin Dynasties,the Northern and Southern Dynasties,the Tang Dynasty,the Five Dynasties,the Song Dynasties and the Yuan Dynasty,but it did not include the pre-Qin and Ming dynasty,so it is not a comprehensive collection of poems on history.Ge Zhen' s "Poems on History ",however,is the first comprehensive collection of four-character poems on history.This work is based on the dynasty and aimed at the emperor.From the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors to the Ming Dynasty,it summarizes the narratives,sings the praise,clarifies the faintness,and combines narrative,lyricism,and argumentation.Each poem is on an emperor,which includes the important events and major figures that occurred during his reign,and the language is extremely concise,the message extremely rich,while the rhythm is very easy to remember.In addition,all the dynasties involved have a brief description under the names,and all the emperors have a detailed or brief introduction under their name,and there are also some brief interpretations under some verses.Later,the Qing dynasty Cao Quan thought that Ge Zhen's self-annotation of the "Poems on History" was too concise as to have some omissions,so he annotated it again,referring to a lot of historical documents.The annotations aim at the contents of the four-character poems.The historical materials are more detailed,so the new book is called " Annotation of Four-Character Poems on History ".The "Annotation of Four-Character Poems on History ",while citing the historical materials annotated " Poems on History ",made a lot of additions,deletions and revisions to the original.Therefore,it is not only an annotated version of " Poems on History ",but a representation of Cao Quan's historical concepts.This treatise takes"Annotation of Four-Character Poems on History" as the research object.It is divided into two parts.The first part is a comprehensive part,and the second part focuses on collation.In addition to the introduction and the conclusion,there are seven chapters in the first part.Chapter One mainly discusses the development of the four-character epic poetry,which is chronologically divided into three periods,namely the Pre-Qin period to Han Dynasty and Wei Dynasty,the period between Tang dynasty and Song dynasty and that between Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty.Chapter Two discusses the authors of Four-Character Poetry of History,Ge Zhen and Cao Quan and the researches on different editions of the two books.Chapter Three introduces the contents of History of Poetry and Four-Character Poetry of History.The fourth chapter provides a concrete summary and discussion of the annotated documents cited in the Four-Character Poetry of History.Especially in the Ming Dynasty,when the history revised by the Qing government has not yet been published,the annotator took He Qiaoyuan's Collections of Famous Mountains of Ming Dynasty as the main cited object,as well as other history books of Ming Dynasty.The fifth chapter discusses the revision of the text of History of Poetry in the Four-Character Poetry of History,which includes revision,augment,continuation,deletion and displacement of the contents.The sixth chapter discusses the orthodox compilation thought and the creation thought of praising the good and belittling the evil in Four-Character Poetry of History.Chapter Seven,as the last chapter,draws a conclusion that the Four-Character Poetry of History implies the historical thought of generalization and evolution of the early Qing Dynasty.Finally,the conclusion is that the book is a collection of poetry compiled to provide political mirror for the rulers of the early Qing Dynasty.The second part is the collation of the "Annotation of Four-Character Poems on History ",it attaches each poem of "Poems on History" to the corresponding poem in the " Annotation of Four-Character Poems on History ",and underlines different words and sentences,which means that it is a different word or sentence.Also,there is another special case that a certain poem has no difference in writing between these two books,but some verses have different positions in the whole poem.In this case,the verses are identified by italics.Such treatment,on the one hand,it is convenient for readers to observe,and on the other hand,it can save the tediousness of proofreading.