The Image Of Xiang Yu In Chinese Ancient Literature

The research object in this paper is Xiang Yu, the character image that represents dual cultural meaning. Dual cultural meaning means that the character image of Xiang Yu shows both historical and literary attributes. In this paper, Xiang Yu is taken as the typical character in literature to explore its different character images in different types of Chinese literature.Meanwhile, the spiritual projection of Chinese traditional culture in ancient Chinese literature is also explored according to the evolution of Xiang Yu’s image in literary worksThe introduction elaborates not only on the reasons for topic selection and the feasibility of the topic, but also on the research status, the selection scope of research text and the research thoughts of this paper.The main body is comprised of three parts:The first part revolves around the origin of the analysis, exploration and study on the image of Xiang Yu-the analysis on the image of Xiang Yu in the Historical Records. Xian Yu was the loser of Struggle between Chu and Han. However, Sima Qian established biography for him as the defeated general in Biographic Sketches of Emperors and treated him as an emperor to make him the first losing hero in history. On the whole, Xiang Yu was shaped into a noble-minded model of tragic hero with dual personality by Sima Qian in the Historical Records. Such positioning has highlighted the three elements of Xiang Yu’s character image:lofty, tragic and dual personality. "No blind praise and no hidden evil deeds" is not only striking characteristic in Sima Qian’s work but also the significant embodiment of his memoir spirit. This has shown a true Xiang Yu. in history to the later generations. Facing varieties of historical data, Sima Qian has also demonstrated his subjective selection and personal task while building the image of Xiang Yu. It is exactly his subjective selection that makes the image of Xiang Yu a perfect combination of historical true with artistic truth. At the same time, his positioning of Xiang Yu’s image has provided a prototype for later literati to build or describe the character image of Xiang Yu.The second part analyzes the categorization of Xiang Yu’s image in ancient Chinese literature after the Historical Records. Based on literature classification and analysis, three representative literary styles are selected to analyze the different features of Xiang Yu’s image one by one. The first style is historical biography, such as the History of the Han Dynasty and History As A Mirror. Historical biography is focused on the two sides of the historical character, no matter when the image as a loser is highlighted or the hero image is recovered objectively, and therefore, the image of Xiang Yu consists with historical fact. It is worth noticing that the historical record made officially positions Xiang Yu as the opposition to orthodox power on behalf of official discourse. The second literary style is poetry. According to literature statistics and comparison,199 poetries in the past dynasties are intended to praise Xiang Yu, and the different features of Xiang Yu’s image is also summarized and analyzed. The third literary style is novel-the representative of light literature. Xiang Yu’s image in the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties was more vivid than that in the historical romance novels, and the love story of Farewell to My Concubine also took shape in the Qian Jin Ji-the legend in the Ming Dynasty and the History of Love-the collection of novels.The third part analyzes the cultural tradition reflected by the evolution of Xiang Yu’s character image. As the significant part of Chinese culture, traditional culture plays an irreplaceable role in the development of literature. The evolution of the image of historical character Xiang Yu in literature has reflected the hierarchy of Chinese traditional culture as well as the modification and integration of minor folk traditional culture by major traditional elite culture. Meanwhile, the striking characteristics of Xiang Yu in light literature have also embodied the cultural awareness of minor tradition.