The Significance Of Tragic Scholars' Images In "Historical Records"

"Biographical Records", with its grand scale and large body of fine thinking, is our first biographical history work and is characterized by its large description of characters. To some extent, the author has merged his entire thoughts and views into the narration of historical events which is developed with characterization as its center. Therefore, only when the characters in"Biographical Records"are deeply analyzed and researched, can we fully understand"Biographical Records". This thesis makes tragic scholars as its study and the significance lies in the historic concept of scholars which run through the history in"Biographical Records"on one hand, on the other hand, tragic scholars occupies a large proportion in the characters recorded in"Biographical Records", which reflect the author's tragic consciousness resulted in his own tragic experiences. For this reason, to make a research on tragic scholars is to combine Sima Qian's tragic consciousness with characterization, to combine characterization with history and society reflected in"Biographical Records", and is the trinity research of the author, the composition and its characters'images. This kind of research really plays the deep significance. Under the direction of this research strategy, this thesis is divided into five parts.The first part is introduction. This part first summarizes the present conditions, the meanings, objections and methods of this study in the thesis.The second part is to clearly define the thesis's study—tragic scholars on the basis of the description of the tragedy and scholars'concepts, and to outline the existing conditions of tragic scholars in"Biographical Records".The third part is the analysis of tragic scholars'images in"Biographical Records". This thesis divides tragic scholars into four kinds. The first kind is tragic warrior, which selects Li Mu, Li Guang, Zhou Bo, Han Xin as major analysis. The second kind is the analysis of the tragic literati's images which are composed of two aspects; one is the image of tragic literati represented by Confucius, Qu Yuan and Jia Yi; the other aspect is the tragic tacticians represented by Shang Yang, Sun Bin and Yuan Ang. The third kind is the tragic paladin, which is focused on the analysis of the ranger Guo Jie and assassins Zhuan Zhu, Yu Rang, Nie Zheng and Jing Ke. Other kinds are the general analysis of hermits and alchemists that are in the minority. With the analysis of various images in the second part, we attempt to appreciate the tragic fate of tragic scholars in Sima Qian's literary work and their spiritual outlook.The fourth part is the significance and influence of the images of tragic scholars. The important value of those tragic scholars'images first lie in the representation of Sima Qian's self-spirit. He generated the unique characteristics of those tragic sholars by blending his personal tragic experiences and tragic images of scholars and the reproducing of original images of scholars. What's more, he also showed his own values through the special judgment of scholars. Secondly, the shaping of those tragic scholars'images has played an important effect on the document value of"Biographical Records", which enabled"Biographical Records"to reveal social facts completely, truly and deeply and show the recurrence of the evolution of scholars'history. It plays a great influence on our history of scholar culture.The fifth part is the summarization of the paper.