Luo Guanzhong lived in the middle and late Yuan Dynasty, which was an era when ethnic contradictions and class contradictions were more acute. With the attitude of not sharing a bed with the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty, Luo Guanzhong was among the lower classes and drew nutrition from popular culture.
Luo Guanzhong spent most of his life in Hangzhou. Life in Hangzhou had an important influence on his later becoming a novelist and playwright.
In Yuan Dynasty, Hangzhou was a trade port and economic center in the south, and its urban culture was quite developed. At the end of Yuan Dynasty, the writers of zaju mostly concentrated in Hangzhou. In this environment, Luo Guanzhong carefully observed and thought, and his outstanding literary talent was tempered and sublimated in the garden of folk art.
Biography of the History of Tang and Five Dynasties is one of Luo Guanzhong's early works. His artistic achievements can't be compared with his later works, but his change from narrating historical events year by year to focusing on portraying characters is a sign that China's long narrative works are gradually maturing, and it is also Luo Guanzhong's contribution to the artistic development of China's classical novels.
After the vigorous peasant uprising broke out at the end of Yuan Dynasty, Luo Guanzhong, who had been paying attention to real social problems, made the most important political decision in his life: to join the rebel army and become the counselor of the rebel leader Zhang Shicheng.
Luo Guanzhong is not a conventional intellectual. According to historical records, he once "aspired to be king". Judging from Luo Guanzhong's joining the rebel army in Zhang Shicheng, he has his own political ambitions and ambitions. Directly involved in the torrent of armed struggle, Luo Guanzhong strongly felt the pulse of the times.
We can get a glimpse of Luo Guanzhong's political ambition and social ideal from his masterpiece The Dragon and Tiger Storm in Song Taizu. In the book "Fengyunhui", the author created an image of a sage-Zhao Kuangyin, who is both civil and military, intelligent and brave, and devoted himself to the people of the world. This shows that his ideal monarch should be like this. It is also based on this that when he discovered that Zhang Shicheng in reality was not such a holy Lord, Luo Guanzhong left Zhang Shicheng and ended his short political activities.
Luo Guanzhong, who ended his life as a peasant army, devoted his enthusiasm to literature, created a rich literary image through his novels, and expressed his views on life and society.
It is said that Luo Guanzhong once wrote the Romance of the Seventeenth History. Unfortunately, only the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Romance of the History of the Tang and Five Dynasties and the Legend of the Three Sui Dynasties have survived to this day. One of the most famous is the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Luo Guanzhong's well-known Romance of the Three Kingdoms was created on the basis of the long-standing story of the Three Kingdoms. However, he did not simply piece together the stories of the Three Kingdoms, but built a brand-new Three Kingdoms world under the guidance of his own thoughts.
Luo Guanzhong draws nutrients from folk stories, focusing on removing the false and retaining the true, and removing the rough and extracting the essence. In this novel, he successfully deals with the relationship between historical truth and artistic fiction, and endows historical figures with flesh and blood by means of artistic expression. Therefore, it should be appropriate for predecessors to call this novel "seven facts and three fictions".
In the well-known Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong, with his grand handwriting and amazing artistic expression, described magnificent war scenes and vivid characters for us. The publication of the popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms marks a new milestone in the history of China literature and promotes the maturity of Chinese novel art.
Luo Guanzhong died at the age of 75 after living in the Ming Dynasty for more than ten years. He is a prominent writer in the history of China literature. His Romance of the Three Kingdoms, together with The Journey to the West, A Dream of Red Mansions and Water Margin, is also known as the four classical masterpieces of China, which is enduring and has eternal artistic charm.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the pioneering work of China Zhang Hui's novel, which developed from the Song and Yuan Dynasties' scripts in China. Storytelling is a kind of popular literature and the basic book for storytellers to tell books. Before each lecture, the storyteller should use the topic to reveal the main content of the story to the audience, which is the origin of Zhang Hui's novels after the Ming Dynasty.
At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, the high development of urban economy and the emergence of capitalist bud provided new factors and favorable conditions for the prosperity of literary creation in Ming Dynasty. Popular literature that meets the cultural and entertainment needs of citizens is particularly prosperous, thus giving birth to Zhang Hui's novels.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, like other Zhang Hui's novels later, has been circulated among the people for a long time, supplemented by storytellers or opera artists, gradually enriching the content, and finally rewritten by writers. They are longer than history lectures and are mainly for readers to read at their desks.
An early work was divided into several volumes, and each volume was divided into several sections; After the mid-Ming Dynasty, that is, we now see various versions of ancient Zhang Hui's novels: how many times have each novel been clearly divided, and the title of the reply has finally developed from a single sentence to a neat antithesis.
The story of Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been circulated among the people for a long time. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the story of the Three Kingdoms became more popular through artists' performances. The tendency of "supporting Liu against Cao" in Pinghua, a Pinghua novel based on the story of the Three Kingdoms in Yuan Dynasty, is very distinct, and Liu, Guan and Zhang are full of heroic breath. It can be seen that from the late Tang Dynasty to the end of Yuan Dynasty, the popular stories of the Three Kingdoms became more and more abundant, which provided sufficient historical conditions for the creation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the future.
On the basis of miscellaneous notes, anecdotes, unofficial history novels, folklore, scripts and operas created by folk artists, Luo Guanzhong used Chen Shou's The History of the Three Kingdoms and its annotation materials, combined with his own creative talent, and re-created and wrote this large-scale and far-reaching classic historical masterpiece Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Romance novels are novels written in the form of chapters based on certain historical events, historical books and legendary materials, with some details added. It requires vivid stories and characters, and the details can be fictional, but the basic plot can't go against historical facts.
The story about the Three Kingdoms has been circulated among the people for a long time. According to Du Bao's Records of the Historian, in the water drama of the period, there were stories such as Cao Cao's attacking coke with water and Liu Bei's leaping horse and Tanxi. According to Liu Zhiji's Biography of History and Cai Tong, some stories of the Three Kingdoms were "learned from the Tao and spread to the public" in the early Tang Dynasty. Li Shangyin's "Joule" poem says: "Or tease Zhang or laugh at Deng Ai's infatuation". In the late Tang Dynasty, the story of the Three Kingdoms was well known to children.
In the Song Dynasty, the story of the Three Kingdoms became more popular through artists' performances and rap. According to "Dream of China in Tokyo", Huo Sijian, a "three-point" expert, appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty, and shadow play, puppet show, southern opera and courtyard book also adapted the story of the Three Kingdoms. At this time, the story of the Three Kingdoms has an obvious tendency to respect Liu and belittle Cao.
Su Shi's Dongpo Zhi Lin records: "Wang Peng tasted the cloud: the children of the native land are poor and poor, and their families are tired and bitter. They need money to sit and listen to the old saying. When it comes to the events of the Three Kingdoms, when I heard that Liu Xuande was defeated, I frequently frowned and shed tears; As soon as I heard that Cao Cao was defeated, I liked fast songs. "
The story of the Three Kingdoms in the Song and Yuan Dynasties is often put on the stage. There were more than 30 kinds of Three Kingdoms operas performed in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, such as Three Wars: Lu Bu, Red Cliff, and Crossing the River with wits. In these plays, the tendency of "respecting Liu and belittling Cao" continues to be shown. This shows that vernacular novels with the story of the Three Kingdoms as the theme may have come into being very early.
The existing early works of the History of the Three Kingdoms, Comments on the History of the Three Kingdoms, was published during the Yuan Dynasty to Zhengnian, which not only showed a clear tendency to support Liu and oppose Cao, but also the works of Liu, Guan and Zhang were full of savage heroes. Zhang Fei's image is the most vivid, and Zhuge Liang's clever plan is also outstanding, but the plot goes against the historical facts and the folklore is strong. The narrative is short, the writing is rough, and there are many fallacies in names and places, which are obviously not modified by literati.
At the same time, there are more than 40 kinds of dramas in the existing stories of the Three Kingdoms: wishing in Taoyuan, going through five customs and beheading six generals, visiting the thatched cottage, Battle of Red Cliffs, a knife meeting, and entrusting orphans in Baidicheng. Since then, Luo Guanzhong has created an excellent historical novel "Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms", which is based on the official history, adopts novels, testifies words and is decent.
On the basis of folk literature, it added the desire of literati. Make full use of the materials provided by historical records such as the History of the Three Kingdoms and Pei Songzhi's Notes, and the important historical events are consistent with historical facts; He also collected a large number of scripts, plays and folklore, and there were many fictions in the details, which formed the face of "seven points are practical and three points are false".
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with more than 700,000 words, has a magnificent structure, many characters and complicated plots. It vividly reflects the political and military struggles between feudal ruling groups during the 90 years from the Yellow Scarf Uprising to the unification of the Western Jin Dynasty, and reproduces the historical features of the Three Kingdoms period.
But The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is not a history book, but a literary masterpiece. Well-known stories in his works, such as Taoyuan Jieyi, Gu Chenghui, Visiting the Cottage, Borrowing Dongfeng, Heroes' Club, and Empty City Plan, are almost household names. Those typical figures with artistic talent, such as Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Cao Cao and Zhou Yu, are almost known throughout the ages.
In the history of China literature, famous works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, The Journey to the West, Dream of Red Mansions, etc. They are all excellent works deeply loved by readers for a long time.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is superb in describing the war.
This book describes hundreds of wars of various types, but it is not repeated. From fighting alone to hand-to-hand combat; From the battle of wits on the battlefield to the scheming in the camp, they are all written in a virtual way, each with its own characteristics. In the battle between Brother Jin and Ma Tie, the novel punctuates lyrical scenes such as describing the bright moon in the river and drinking poems in the mountains from time to time, making the story relaxed, ups and downs and exciting.
It is rare to write the war so vividly and ever-changing in the treasure house of world literature.
The grandeur of the conception, the vastness of the activity scene, the vividness of the characters and the superb artistic level are unparalleled in the world classical novels.
The rulers praised the book for its orthodox tendency of "supporting Liu and restraining Cao" and learned the art of governing the country from it; Buyi people appreciate military wisdom and relish stories; The leaders of the peasant uprising regarded this book as a military treasure and learned strategies and tactics from it; Sophisticated people also regard this book as a treasure house of strategies and devote themselves to studying ways to protect their families. The stories and characters in the book are deeply rooted in people's hearts and have had an extremely extensive and profound influence in society.
At the same time, with the cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been widely spread overseas, translated into dozens of languages such as Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Russia, and spread all over the world. Russian sinologists praised the book as "a masterpiece that truly enriches human nature"; French scholars believe that "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the most famous historical novel"; In the hero-worshipping American society, people praised The Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a masterpiece describing heroic achievements in the early days. The British academic circles unanimously recommended The Romance of the Three Kingdoms as an "epic work". In Japan, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has the widest readership, even surpassing the original Japanese novels.