The Study Of The Poetry Into The History

Historical biography focuses on character depiction and narrative, while poetry focuses on expressing feelings and ideas. If we consider that truth is life of historical biography, imagine is life of poetry. Historical biography and poetry have essential distinction. However, it becomes a beautiful scenery line that poetry into historical biography in Chinese ancient historical biography literature. Poetry into historical biography is not random or accidental packing of historical materials by the writer. It is a meaningful form and needs to be further studied. This thesis takes the two great biography works as examples——The Records of the Historian and History of the Han Dynasty, and does special study on poetry into historical biography.This thesis is about60,000words, and can be divided into introduction, four chapters’body and conclusion.The introduction part mainly introduces the basis for argumentation and background of this research. This part also gives a brief introduction of the research idea and method.The first chapter gives a general introduction on poetry into historical biography. This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section gives the definition of poetry into historical biography. It clarifies the meaning of poetry into historical biography. Also, it includes the intension and extension of historical biography and poetry. What’s more, it distinguishes differences between the concepts of several groups easily confused. And then it makes clear about the range and emphasis of this thesis. The second section visualizes specific situations about poetry into historical biography in The Records of the Historian and History of the Han Dynasty in the form of statistical charts and tables. In this section, poems in historical biography are divided into three categories in accordance with the way about poetry into historical biography. The first category is poems created by the characters in the works. The second category is folk songs. The third category is poems quoted from The Book of Songs.The second chapter analyzes the characteristics of poems in historical biography. The fusion of poems and narrative is the most important characteristic of poems in historical biography which are also characterized by authenticity. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section is about poems created by the characters in the works and narrative, which mainly analyzes representative examples. The second section is about folk songs and narrative, which does classification research on hymn, satirical poems and nursery rhymes that forecast the future. The third section is about poems quoted from The Book of Songs and narrative, which analyzes poems quoted from The Book of Songs by the characters in the works and the writer’s appraisements. The fourth section is about the authenticity of poems in historical biography. Generally speaking, poems in historical biography are true. When the authenticity of some poems which are popular is uncertain, the writer who respected history preserved and transmitted doubts. This conclusion is drawn by comparing with credible documents.The third chapter explores the reasons of poetry into historical biography. When we know what poetry into historical biography is, we should also know why. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section analyzes the rationality and inevitability of poetry into historical biography by stylistic approach. And it shows that historical biography has the polyphony potential. The second section analyzes the reasons from cultural tradition. The category of poems quoted from The Book of Songs is mainly induced by the quotation tradition. The category of poems created by the characters in the works is evoked by the Chu Culture. The category of folk songs shows the influence of folk literature. The third section analyzes the reasons from writers. The excellent writer always has the history morality, knowledge, view and talent. And the writer also has poet temperament. It offers the possibility and tendency of poetry into historical biography from writers. This section makes a concrete analysis of Si ma Qian and Ban Gu’s poet temperament.The fourth chapter discusses the meaning of poetry into historical biography. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section is about the rich and colorful functions that poetry effects on historical biography, such as combining prose with verse and having various forms, expression of emotion and making of image, prediction and helping narrative, creating context and rendering atmosphere, and so on. The second section analyzes the relation between poetry into historical biography and poetry’s historicize and canonization. In the process of poetry into historical biography, poems were shown in specific historical context, which embodied the tendency of historicize. The historical biography helped the wide and permanent spreading of poems by its authenticity and authority. So poetry into historical biography is an important way of poetry’s canonization. The third section is about classical novels’reception of poetry into historical biography. The influence of poetry into historical biography is wide, especially in novels. Therefore, according to the developing of novels, this section analyzes novels’reception and change of poetry into historical biography in different stages, such as stories recording spirits and anecdotes in Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties, the legendary novels in Tang Dynasty, colloquial stories in Song and Yuan Dynasties, vernacular novels in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and so on. And this section also points out the disadvantages of poetry into novels. Novels’reception and change of poetry into historical biography show that poetry into historical biography adds rich literary flavor to narrative. This will inspire and promote the development and change of Chinese narrative art.The conclusion part summarizes this thesis and talks about multiple meanings of poetry into historical biography. I hope the research in this thesis will enlighten others.