A Research On Aristocratic History Tales In Zuo Zhuan

The figure’s historical tales in the book Zuo Zhuan is a significantphenomenon. In conversations, the figures in Zuo Zhuan often quotedhistorical stories to convince others and elaborate their ideas. With thisclear and definite purpose, the narrators told history stories not only aboutlegendary era, dynasty Xia, Shang and Zhou but also about familyheredity, national lineage and ancestor evaluating.The fact that the narrators in ZuoZhuan can use historical knowledgesmoothly directly was related with the history education they accepted.The tradition of word of mouth, continuation of the Official Educationand the activity of private school are important reasons for the people inthis era to control historical knowledge well. During this period, variousvassal countries attached great importance to analyze and summarize the success or failure of the historical events so that they can learn from it,thus to avoid mistakes and reproduce the glorious history on countryadministrating. This, in some extent, promotes the popularization anddissemination of historical knowledge.The historical tales in ZuoZhuan clearly reflect people’s view of historyin this times which includes both rational and divine factors. It is themixture of these two kinds of contradictory history concepts forms themain characteristic of this era. On one hand, from Shang and Zhoudynasty to the Spring and Autumn period, people still could not breakaway from divine consciousness and destiny idea while superstition stillexisted in all aspects of society, so could not historical tales. On the otherhand, rational factors rise sharply. Through the summary of historyexperiences, people begin to aware of the role of rational factors in thedevelopment of the social progress. The narrators tended to chooserational factors to support their points. Though mixed with divine factors,the rational history concept still played a majority role historical tales inZuo Zhuan.That is, rational factors had advantage over divine factors and became the main trend of that time.