Destiny. "historical Records" Causal Narrative Mode

Sima Qian is a great historian. It is his purpose to explain the nature and causes of history. He wrote Shi ji with this exploratory spirit .This thesis is aimed at summarizing Sima Qian's narrative type of retributive justice which was out of curiosity.The main text altogether is divided up into three chapters:The first chapter inspects Sima Qian's thoughts which based on the belief in God's will that was accepted by normal people. In the period from five lords to the three kings, the key word of thought is morality which is the imitation of God's will. Morality is meaning respecting God and protecting roots for the development of peoples. In the spring and autumn period Confucius stressed moral education for the peace facing the factual chaos and confusion. Xun zi had contended that man is born with evil nature which can be regenerated through moral education and law to keep society as a whole. As a liberal thinker, Sima Qian had accepted thinking all above critically and established his own school that arose from his empathy for other people's situation. He thought that the God would be fair and God's will would be showing by rewarding good and punishing evil. According to Sima Qian, the goodness means morality, law, human—kindness and human emotion which should be placed in the first. Otherwise something opposed is evil. So there are narration types of retributive justice in Shi Ji which shown God's will.The second chapter inspects the details of narrative types of retributive justice. These are five narrative types—the type of rewarding good and punishing evil, the type of foretell, the type of symbol, and the type of making judgment. He had established his belief in God by those narrative types. Although he had found that God seems unfair sometimes, Sima Qian still insisted his belief by writing history to make other justice law.The third chapter inspects the aesthetic feelings of narrative types of retributive justice. The first place, the belief in God is waking up goodness from human heart and forming the feeling of greatness and sublime. The second palace, the mystical atmosphere made by narration of retributive justice has enriched readers' unusual experience, because the moral law and fate are like the sword of Damocles which advises human behavior. The third place, because of the mixed opinion from moral angle or reasonable judgment, the text of Shi Ji is providing us more understanding and making people moving deeply.In a word, According to the analysis above, the thesis try to return Sima Qian's true thought which centre on the belief in God, and announce the source of literary mystique and dramaticeffect for later literature.The narration of retributive justice had promoted Chinese classical fiction to grow up. Inspecting some novel such as The Romance of Three Kingdoms, San Yan, Er Pai and The Strange Story from a Chinese Studio, we can found the fact: Chinese classical novel had not only absorbed the thought resource of God belief but also learned the narrative type of rewarding good and punishing evil, the type of foretell, the type of symbol, the type of making judgment, and the type of fate. So the Chinese classical novel developed its own style.