Historical Narrative In Yutang Lin’s Works

In this essay, the author researches Yutang Lin’s most narrative literature and structurally builds a discussion of Lin’s historical narrative into three chapters, which are the subject of Yutang Lin’s historical narrative, the characteristics of Yutang Lin’s historical narrative, and its origin.The first chapter mainly demonstrates the subject of Yutang Lin’s historical narrative, which are ’People’s History’ and ’Reflections of History’.First, the author gives comprehensive analysis on the massive figures which appear in Lin’s literature.These literature figures can be generally classified into two categories, the governors and the intellectuals, both which Lin exhibits and investigates from his humanistic view.Then the author discusses the criteria of Lin’s judgment and evaluation on his creative and historical figures from two aspects. First, Lin respects the authentic human nature, and tries hard to show his ideal of making human nature into an integral entity in his literature. Second, Lin emphasizes the compromise and balance of different aspects of human nature. In the second chapter, Lin’s reflection of the history is explored from two perspectives, which are the characteristics of history and the function of historical research.The former is the ’wheel of history’, which includes the factors of nationality, ethics, social-elements and group-psychology and other non-numerical matters, and are stated by Lin as’incredible issues’, since they can not be easily measured by scientific methods and instruments.However, these factors can play significant roles in the development of human history, and Lin uses the Buddhism concept of’Karma’to give explanations to them.The latter is the function of historical research, by which Lin tries to judge the modern world through his research and agreements on history.This function not only reflects Lin’s unique sensibility of history, but also reflects his focus on the practical value of history which to some extent damages the aesthetic function of history.In the second chapter, the author discusses the characteristics of Lin’s historical narrative in depth, by detailed analysis of Lin’s main historical literature. These characteristics can be classified into three aspects. The first is his romanticism of historical narrative, which includes the romantic temperament of his historical figures, and the legendary imagination of historical events. The second is his critical thinking embedded in his historical narrative. This thinking is shown in his narrative perspectives and also in his usage of comparison in the narrative discourse. The third aspect is his interest of logic, as it can be found that Lin has a strong love and pursuit of logic in his historical narrative.In the third chapter, a detailed review of Lin’s historical narrative is carried out. It can be seen that Lin’s historical narrative includes his agreement on some of the western theory, and also on some of the traditional Chinese culture. He inherits Croce’s’expression theory’and also the viewpoint that’all history is contemporary history’; and he also inherits Babbitt’s concept of’Statuta personalia’. In terms of Lin’s inheritance of Chinese culture, this essay mainly discusses the influence of’historiographer consciousness’and’the golden mean of the Confucius school’to him in his historical narrative.