Is the Records of the Grand Historian the Founding Work of Chinese Biographical Literature

The Status and Influence of the Records of the Grand Historian

The Records of the Grand Historian is the foundation work of China's biographical historiography, and also the beginning of China's biographical literature. Ancient Chinese biographical literature had already taken shape in the pre-Qin period, with "Shangshu" as the record of words and "Spring and Autumn Annals" as the record of events, followed by "Zuozhuan" in chronological form and "Guoyu" and "Strategies of the Warring States" in country-specific form. However, it was Sima Qian who pioneered the character-centered historiography. The emergence of the Shiji marked the peak of the development of historical literature in ancient China.

The Records of the Grand Historian is a masterpiece of biographical literature, but it has the meaning and charm of poetry. The Shiji refers to the ancient and modern worlds, and has inherited both the Poetry Classic and the Chu Rhetoric. At the same time, the hearty style of the prose of the Warring States period is also borrowed by the Shiji, fully reflecting the fusion of various literary traditions in the Great Unification Dynasty.

The influence of the Shiji is extremely far-reaching, and it has provided rich nutrients and strong impetus for the development of literature in future generations.

Sima Qian, as a great historian and literary scholar, vigorously promoted the spirit of humanism in the book of "The Records of the Grand Historian" and set up a glorious banner for future generations of writers. The humanistic spirit permeating the "Records of the Grand Historian" is multi-faceted, mainly: to establish virtue, merit, speech for the purpose of seeking to remain in history of the positive spirit of entering the world, bear humiliation and dirt, through hardship and indomitable, self-improvement and enterprising spirit, give up their lives to fight for justice and go to the fire of the spirit of courage and sacrifice, criticize the tyranny of the torture and call for the world's true love of the spirit of humanitarianism, and the spirit of high aspirations, righteousness and not to be humiliated by the spirit of personality self-esteem. A series of full-blooded characters in the Records of the Grand Historian have embodied the above spirit from different aspects, and many of them have become the objects of admiration and contemplation for writers of future generations, giving them encouragement and enlightenment.

The Records of the Grand Historian is a model of biographical literature, as well as a model for ancient prose, and its writing techniques, style, and linguistic features have made it possible for future generations of prose writers to follow its example. From the Tang and Song dynasties, the eight great writers of ancient Chinese literature, to the Ming dynasty before and after the seven, the Qing dynasty Tongcheng school, all of them respected the "Records of the Grand Historian", and their essays were also y influenced by Sima Qian. The Historical Records is simple, concise and expressive in language, translating many difficult-to-read ancient books into written Chinese, as well as appropriately quoting colloquialisms and proverbs, making it vivid and lively. The language of the Historical Records is mostly a single line of odd words, do not deliberately seek to work steadily, and do not avoid repeating the word, the form of freedom, not confined to one pattern. Because of this, the history of the ancient writers in criticizing the formalist tendency of parallelism and correcting the difficult ancient Austrian style, are to be cited in the "Records of the Grand Historian", as a model of ancient literature.

Many of the biographies in the Shiji have twisted plots and vivid characters, which have accumulated valuable experience for the creation of novels for future generations. Many of the basic techniques for characterization in novels were already in use in the Shiji, such as using language that conformed to the identity and character of the characters, displaying character through specific events or trivialities of life, and placing characters in conflicting situations to express them. From Tang legends to Ming and Qing novels, traces of the Shiji can be seen in characterization, plot arrangement, scene description and other aspects. At the same time, ancient writers also explored the relationship between the Historical Records and novels in terms of writing style, and came to many insightful conclusions.

Many of the stories in the Records of the Grand Historian were widely circulated in ancient times, and became the subjects of novels and dramas in later generations. A considerable portion of the characters and stories recounted in the Plain Tales of the Warring States, which appeared in the Yuan Dynasty, the Zhi Zhuan of the Warring States, which appeared in the Ming Dynasty, and the Zhi Zhuan of the Warring States of the Eastern Zhou, which has been handed down to the present day, are taken from the Shiji. Ming Zhenwei's Popular Performances of the Western Han Dynasty also utilized a great deal of material from the Shiji. Many of the characters and stories in the Shiji were successively written into dramas and put on the stage. According to Fu Shihua's "Complete List of Miscellaneous Dramas of the Yuan Dynasty", there are more than 180 kinds of dramas based on the Shiji. According to Li Changzhi's statistics, among the existing 132 kinds of Yuan miscellaneous dramas, there are 16 kinds of stories taken from the Records of the Grand Historian. The later Peking Opera also had many plays based on the Historical Records. In short, the Historical Records has become a treasure trove of material for ancient Chinese novels and dramas, and it has been repeatedly exploited as a high-grade art deposit.