Between Literature And History

"Chun-Qiu Writing Method" originates in "Chun-Qiu" which was created or modified by Confucius. Confucius was a typical intellectual. He considered his so-called "Road" as social principles and social ideals, and considered promoting the development of social history as his duty, his spiritual core of his cause was intellectuals' sense of responsibility and mission. Confucius had intended to accomplish his own social responsibility and historical mission in political practice, but he suffered so much that he had to change the way to achieve the ideal, so he wanted to express his strong desire that was concerning history and interfering with society through creating history books."Chun-Qiu Writing method" is the way of recording history adopted by "Chun-Qiu", including objective writing, praising writing, criticizing writing, ineffable writing, traditional writing, the five basic writing methods. It adopts authentic records for the core principles, while focusing on putting appraisal in the history .It is contradictions entity of authentic records and appraisal, and rhetoric is the bridge to connect authentic records with appraisal. The social responsibility and the historial mission of Intellectuals is the spiritual core of "Chun-Qiu writing method", which embodies the intellectuals' precious quality of actively interfering in society and history."Records of the Historian" based on authentic records, "Records of the Historian" also embodied the concept of appraisal and carried a subjective feelings of Sima Qian, Sima Qian consciously and very naturally inherited the essence of "Chun-Qiu Writing Method" to create "Records of the Historian". In the "Records of the Historian", the unification of authentic records and appraisal still resorted to rhetoric. Sima Qian exerted rhetoric to handle history matters so that he could obtain success both in history and literature. "Records of the Historian" could become a shining example of unification of literature and history."History of the Han Dynasty", often objectively recorded historical events and historical figures so that it couldn't express the active spirit that consisted in "Chun-Qiu writing method". This rhetoric is the carrier of spirit, and it existed in "Records of the Historian" as the literary aesthetic factors. "History of the Han Dynasty " deviated from "Records of the Historian" on this point. Rhetoric adopted by "History of the Han Dynasty" lost significance of the carrier of appraisal in essence.History gradually moves toward independence, as a science, and it requires a history to be objective, prescriptive, without any emotional factors. With the development of Chinese learning and culture and the improvement of human perception , history is bound to be science, and history books gradually remove aesthetic factors in the direction of evolution toward pure history, which is the inevitable trend of development.Literature is the soil in which "Chun-Qiu Writing Method" inherits and develops. With history separating from literature, intellectuals' soul of actively interfering in society and history exists in "Chun-Qiu Writing Method" shifts from history books to literature area.