Reasons and Significance for Sima Qian’s Creation of Records of Historian and His Writing of Tragic Heroes
Abstract
In Sima Qian’s Records of Historian, there are 112 works about characters, of which 57 are about tragic characters, and most of them ended with suicide. Sima Qian seems to admire these tragic characters very much. Sima Qian’s composition of those tragic heroes in the Records of Historian is groundbreaking. Before Sima Qian, no one in ancient China ever wrote the genre of biography of tragic heroes, and his personal emotional inclination towards these tragic characters can be clearly felt in his writing. In order to understand Sima Qian’s tragic writing, his personal tragic fate can be related to. Sima Qian’s personal experience has given him the color of tragedy. This paper mainly explores the reasons and significance for Sima Qian’s writing of tragic heroes and his creation of the Records of Historian. Conclusions can be drawn that Sima Qian’s writing of tragic heroes is due to his appreciation of heroes with different personalities and the resonance of fate with them, and his creation of the Records of Historian reveals his adherence to filial piety and his view of life and death. It is also a manifestation of the thoughts of Confucius.
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