Research On The Criticism Of Characters In Shiji By Scholars During The Reign Of Emperor Qianlong And Jiaqing

As china’s first comprehensive biographical history book, Shiji(Records of the Grand Historian) has been highly respected since its publication. Meanwhile, scholars have made a lot of comments on it, whose emphases vary from one dynasty to another, showing the differences in scholars’study abilities and attitudes. Especially during the reign of Emperor Qianlong and Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, a large number of scholars made various comments on the Shiji, with lots of books specializing in the research of it and some articles relating to the comments on it, which showed that this history book was the most important study material for the scholars at that time. Meanwhile, the special political atmosphere in the Qing Dynasty and the scholars’unique study attitudes also provided essential conditions for those scholars to make creative contributions to the research on the Shiji. In the introduction part, this paper makes a brief summary of different comments on the Shiji in the different dynasties; the first chapter talks about the status of scholars in the Qianlong and Jiaqing period, the characters they chose and the reasons why criticism of the Shiji was so popular during that period, with the purpose to discuss those scholars’different identities and to explain their attitudes when making comments on the Shiji; the second chapter mainly discusses those scholars’ performance when they made criticisms of the characters in the Shiji; the third chapter mainly discusses the new understanding of those scholars about the means of artistic expression of the characters in the Shiji; and the last chapter talks about the methods that those scholars mainly took to commentate the Shiji and the unique features of their comments.