The Historical Value Of A New Account Of The Tales Of The World

Whether to study the social, economic and political, or to explore philosophy, art, literature and culture in the Wei-Jin Period, the researchers regard A New Account of the Tales of the World as original materials consciously or unconsciously. Some scholars even think that A New Account of the Tales of the World is the most important and the most true historical data,by which they can study the changes of the history, customs and culture from the end of the Han Dynasty to Wei-Jin Period.However,is the historical value of A New Account of the Tales of the Worldreally so huge? In fact, both ancient and modern scholars admit that A New Ac count of the Tales of the World can offer supplementary materials to the traditional h istory books.But the view that A New Account of the Tales of the World is equ al to the history book willcause many fallacies. Because this book collect the ma terials from the previous books,so the credibility of materials depends on the ori gin. In other words, if the entry comes from a historical book, its accuracy is e quivalent is higher;while if the entry is taken from the books like YuLin and Gu oZi or from a memory of his generation, it is more or less will be inaccurate. I n short, if we use A New Account of the Tales of the World to support a resear ch project, even just redarded as a circumstantial evidence, we should differentiat e its historical authenticity.The analysis of its historical vaule is the basis of the researches regarding o n the other aspects ofA New Account of the Tales of the World. We should ana lyze characters and events in the book based on historical facts, rather than the western theory or popular words.Otherwise, the result can only be inconsistent wi th reason or logic or common sense.Just like Zhou Boren puts it:"It means neith er fish nor fowl."Because the stylistic feature of A New Account of the Tales of the World lswidiely misunderstood, some researchers regard this book as a novel, w bile others think it is a historical book. It will undoubtedly bring a lot of confus ion. So this paper tries to clarify the style of the book.And on this basis I try to probe into the reasons why its historical vaule has both positive and negative sid es,and focus on revealling the negative side.From the perspective of philology, I will list the entries which do not accord with the historical facts on the basis o f traditional methods of textual research and reference of the predecessors.This article is divided into three parts.The first part mainly analyzes the rea sons why its historical vaule has both positive and negative sides. This part begi ns with the discussion and analysis about the stylistic properties of this book, all owing for the big background of the Wei-Jin Period that literature and history is mixed up,ending with the analysis of original documents.The second part mainly describes the positive side of its historical value. Because the book historical va lue has always been sure for everyone, this part is briefly described into two as pects.One is the comparison between A New Account of the Tales of the World a nd JinShu, the other one is the views that manyscholars support that A New Acc ount of the Tales of the World can offer supplementary materials to the tradition al history books.The third part reveals the negative side of its historical value fr om mainly from two dimensions,namely the literary fiction and the classification of entries which do not accord with the historical facts.