At the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, social contradictions were sharp, and peasant uprisings broke out one after another. After years of war, Zhu Yuanzhang wiped out heroes, overthrew the Yuan Dynasty and established the Ming Dynasty. During this period, people were displaced, and Luo Guanzhong, as a playwright and playwright, lived at the bottom of society.

Understand and be familiar with the people's sufferings, expect social stability, people live and work in peace and contentment, think as the bottom intellectuals, and hope to end the tragic situation caused by the turmoil. Thus came the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which was based on the history of the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Second, the source of the theme

The History of the Three Kingdoms, written by Chen Shou in the Western Jin Dynasty, is the earliest source of the story of the Three Kingdoms, but it is a biographical history book with a brief account and an outline. Pei Songzhi, a Southern Song Dynasty poet, annotated the History of the Three Kingdoms, adding many anecdotes, which greatly enhanced the legend and readability.

Liu Zhixi, a historian in the middle Tang Dynasty, said in Shi Tong that the story of Zhuge Liang's death has been "learned from his journey and spread to many people", which shows that the story of the Three Kingdoms has been widely spread among the people during this period.

Third, the process of writing a book

At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Luo Guanzhong absorbed folklore, scripts and drama stories on the basis of Chen Shou's "The History of the Three Kingdoms" and Pei Songzhi's notes, and wrote The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The earliest extant edition was published in the first year of Jiajing (1522), and it is called Jiajing edition, and its title is "The Biography of Pingyang Hou, Jin and Later Learning Robben".

After Jiajing edition, a large number of new periodicals appeared, all of which were mainly Jiajing edition, and only did some work such as illustration, textual research, annotation, addition and deletion of words, volume number and sorting purpose. During the Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty, Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang and his son made some revisions to Jiajing's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, mainly sorting out the contents and modifying the wording. Change poetry, etc. The content has not changed much.

Extended data:

With a length of 750,000 words, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms created more than 400 characters with mature novel language, described the historical process of nearly a hundred years, and created a new novel genre, which not only made readers at that time "copy for viewing", but also inspired scribes and booksellers to continue writing and publishing similar novels.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is famous all over the world and is also welcomed by foreign readers. As early as the third year of Qin Long in the Ming Dynasty (1569), it had spread to North Korea, and in the eighth year of Chongzhen (1635), Amin published The History of the Three Kingdoms, which was collected in Oxford University, England.

Since the Japanese version of Popular Three Kingdoms was compiled and published by Japanese monk Wenshan in the 28th year of Kangxi (1689), Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Britain, France, Russia and many other countries have translated their own languages, published many research papers and monographs, and made valuable discussions and high comments on the novel Romance of Three Kingdoms.

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