New Historical Novel: A "Problematic" History Narration

Since 1985, a number of newly historical novels, which were different from the old ones, have been appeared gradually and literary critics have tried to make a definition to this kind of new historical novels. It could be said that the name of "new historical novel" have already been used widely before having a strict definition. As an important literary phenomenon in the new period, the origin of new historical novel was closely linked with the Chinese historical and cultural traditions. It was the result of contemporary complicated society and cultural matters, and it was also affected by the western new historicism to a certain extent.However, new historical novel is a problematic narration. Revolution historical fiction, root-seeking literature and avant-garde fiction are origin of new historical novel's problematic narration. Every kind of authoring undoubtedly is paranoia in history course, history cognition and history narration, which always are ignored and covered, and they are non-historicized. We place the four kinds of relationshipbetween new historical novel and history in the four dimensions------writers, works,readers and society between history and literary activities. New historical novel text has apparent "conflict": it's personally history narrative,one-way historical content about power, it's fables from real society,too much attention to folk culture, which exactly goes far from historical narration's significance and aim, and makes the creation of the new historical novel face a number of difficulty to balance the tension: balance between literature and history, choice between Historical and historical, and choice between objectivity and chanciness. We show a contradictory fact of new historical novel by the discovery of the new historical novel's tensility, and try to carry out a precise assessment of the value for new historical novels.