What are the characteristics of the eight histories before the early Tang Dynasty?

In the early Tang Dynasty, eight histories of the previous generation were revised, and many historians and scribes were mobilized to write essays. Moreover, this writing method is also the concrete practice of the author's literary view of respecting morality and carrying things. Therefore, these historical essayists made their own contributions to the literary innovation movement at that time in theory and practice.

The narrative texts of Eight Histories are mostly prose, or both parallel prose and prose, all of which strive to be concrete and vivid, so as to avoid sketchiness and stagnation; On the other hand, historical writings are mostly parallel, or mainly prose, emphasizing rhetoric and literary talent. However, the literariness of historical biography prose in the early Tang Dynasty is not limited to this. More importantly, all histories are good at depicting historical figures in the form of biographies, thus showing a certain degree of "novel" characteristics, among which the most "novel" characteristics are the Book of Jin, the History of South and the History of North. In the comments of predecessors, it is regarded as a "novel". In Zhu's view, li yanshou's History of North and South is a good novel besides Sima Gong's History as a Mirror. Wang Shizhen called The Book of Jin "a novel in Mandarin". The historical biography of the early Tang Dynasty inherited the traditional historical style of Historical Records, which undoubtedly had a considerable influence on the novels of the Tang Dynasty. Zhao Yi said: "(Tang Xiu) official history was not published in the Tang Dynasty, and there are many volumes. There was no lettering method in the Tang Dynasty, and it was impossible to prepare unless there was great power. However, the history of "South" and "North" is brief and easy to copy, and there are many books in the past. " ("Notes on Twenty-two Histories", Volume 9) Du You's "General Code" in the Tang Dynasty also tells the history of Jin Shu and Sui Shu, which were compulsory for students and apprentices in the practice industry at that time. The revision of Tang Shi, at least Nannai, Northern History and Book of Jin, has become popular in contemporary times. These three books are the most interesting novels, and there is no doubt that legendary writers should imitate them. The narrative texts of various histories are mainly prose (Liang, Chen and even pure prose), which is the forerunner of the ancient prose movement. Han and Liu's "ancient prose" is free, flexible and vivid, especially suitable for describing changeable events and tortuous plots, which is quite adopted by legendary writers after Yuanhe and Changqing. This is the indirect influence of historical prose on novels. We can't rule out the direct influence of the prose of historical biography itself on legends. Therefore, it can be considered that the prose of historical biography in the early Tang Dynasty not only inherited the method of transferring the pen from the historical biography, but also inspired the legendary writing, which had a certain influence on the "absorbing the pen as a novel" of the Tang people.