Historical elements

First of all, it is necessary to make a simple classification of historical novels, which can be roughly divided according to the age and writing method. Chronology. I don't think I need to say, it's all chronology. According to the writing method, it can be divided into realism and new historicism. Realism emphasizes restoring history to the greatest extent, reproducing history, showing historical contradictions, and following the details of historical materials. On the other hand, the new historicism emphasizes that the history of a novel is just a rhetorical imagination of the author and a subjective narrative product, which is more personalized, subjective and prose culture. It makes full use of various narrative techniques familiar to modern readers to enhance the interest of reading and shorten the distance with readers. In many such works, the history tends to change from the mainstream grand narrative to the small-scale family and even personal emotional history and life history. The typical representative is White Deer Plain. Or maze-like clues to events, exemplified by My Name Is Red.

Below, enter to these classic historical novel creation experience analysis. It is mainly discussed from four aspects: conception of historical novels, preparation of historical materials in advance, contradiction arrangement of historical themes, hierarchy arrangement of historical figures and force arrangement of historical events.

All creation begins with conception, so how do you determine the specific historical events you want to represent in the process of conceiving a historical novel? I personally love historical novels. Take Tolstoy's most famous book, War and Peace, for example, to see how he conceived and prepared the materials.

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace at the end of the nineteenth century. It was set in the early nineteenth century, during the Napoleonic Wars, 60 or 70 years later. In the novel, he wrote:

"In 1856 (from the Napoleonic wars are over more than forty years), I began to write has a propensity to medium-length novel, the hero should be a party with families to return to the Russian December. I since 1825, misfortune is my hero and wanders circuit that era, but a beginning written. But I have is a hero in 1825 married adults. In order to understand him, I had to turn to his youth, and of his youth is in Russian history glorious era in 1812. Then I have to write the beginning of aside, since 1812 times wrote. "but the third time that I have to write down the beginning of the rest. This time I intend to begin to guide not one, but many heroes and heroines through the historical events of 1805, 1807, 1812, 1825, and 1856." In other words, the main goal of the conception is to identify the growth of the characters, specific eras and important historical events. Historical events become the key points of the novel's plot contradictions.

Tolstoy divided his conception into three stages, based on historical events: I. the beginning of the century, the first fifteen years. It was the future that weathered the storms of the Great Patriotic War of 1812 and the youth of the Decemberists. The 1920s and the high point of this era, the uprising of 1825. Third, in the 1950s and the middle of the century, the Krimmu War ended in the defeat of the Russian army, the sudden death of Nicholas I, the amnesty of the Decemberists, the return of the Decemberists, the period of social life change in Russia.

When we have completed the preliminary conception, we can then move on to the preparation of the historical material. Wrote the young son of heaven "LingLiZeng truth, the importance of historical material preparation: I think historical novel the author needs to spend a lot of energy and events to refer to historical materials, learning and understanding the historical law of development, make clear to show the era of political, economic, cultural, ethical and moral factors, and under the condition of the social formation of a variety of character types, and so on. Therefore, we must be familiar with these historical materials, and it is better not to cram at the last minute, but to enjoy and accumulate the content of daily reading.

So what historical materials should we look for? Tolstoy studied a great deal of material about the Great Patriotic War of 1812 before writing War and Peace. Not only that, but he quoted only authentic historical documents -- edicts, orders, battle plans, battle plans, letters -- and did not change a word. In order to better reveal the significance of historical events, he also draws on the memoirs of participants in the Great Patriotic War, including the notes of prisoners of War, and newspapers and magazines from the War of 1812, as well as many unpublished materials (orders, instructions, submissions, reports, letters, etc.) from the archives, and a great deal of oral history. Therefore, when accumulating historical materials, we should try our best to refer to the first-hand oral and archival materials, and should not take the historical materials exclusive to the second or even the third hand as reference.

After completing the accumulation of historical materials, the third step is to arrange the story contradictions according to the historical theme of the work. For example, the theme of "Yongzheng Emperor" by Eryuehe is to explore the great impact of political killings, power struggles and dictatorship on society from the perspective of emperor and court culture. He set the conflict, therefore, is tightly around in the courts of power struggle, human struggle of various factors, such as the handmaiden drive a wedge between right and wrong, the temple of intrigue, prince exclude dissidents, etiquette struggle between, between father and son the goal conflict, etc., thus put up since emperor kangxi, down to NianGengYao, long wait, And the contradictions and conflicts of eunuchs, counsellors and maids of court were dragged in. This kind of power narrative reflecting the power struggle becomes the historical theme and contradiction center of the whole novel.

Set the contradiction, but also should pay attention to multi-level arranged each historical figures, such as the flow resistance of the young son of heaven ", is arranged for three levels of the characters, at the beginning of the opening, write two scenarios: one is the yongping mansion of two villagers against AnJun king tong near-royalty to enclosure, because appealed noted, drove to the outside of the meridian gate with a knife to cut belly. In the face of such two major cases of human life, the Qing court of the council of ministers of the king Bele, unexpectedly to count what passed the resolution, not for any punishment. Another episode is that Chen Mingxia, a famous scholar in the south of the Yangtze River, was impeached by princes and officials for saying things like "keep hair and clothes". The Shunzhi emperor knew that he did not deserve death, but under pressure had to behead him. These two episodes sharply brought to the fore the issue of national contradictions.

In the following description, three levels of national contradictions are established. 1. The level of the people, that is, the poor workers at the bottom, including the children of the pear garden who were ravaged and bullied. In the eyes of the Manchu aristocracy, they were just living "cattle and horses". 2. The middle class, represented by intellectuals. They are deeply educated by Confucian orthodox thoughts, have sentimental feelings for the former Lord, but do not give up the present various benefits, so often fall into the ideological situation of self-abasement. Even when he became a "common man" and hid in the mountains, he did not forget to put on a show and be served and satisfied everywhere. From these three levels, the author endows the national contradictions with rich connotations, which actually goes far beyond the national contradictions.

In the creation of historical novels, we should also pay attention to the arrangement of political forces of historical events. Take Hugo's '93 as an example. During the French Revolution, he arranged the plot closely around the life-and-death struggle between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces in mid-1793. The new republic executed Louis XVI, and counterrevolutionary forces at home and abroad countered: In the Vendee, Royalists incited and manipulated the rebellion of 100,000 peasants, and the European monarchies formed an anti-French coalition in an effort to extinguish the revolution.

Hugo also describes the harshness of the class struggle between the two sides: Louis XVI is executed, the nobles are hung from branches; The Royalist retaliation, in turn, was "shooting an average of thirty Blues a day" and "setting fire to the city and burning all the inhabitants alive in their homes". The ignorant and backward peasants, deceived by the Royalists and hurt by the war, became an unrepentant royalist force. By drawing a microscopic picture of the forces involved in the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, Hugo clearly and profoundly showed how the struggle came into being and how it developed to such a harsh degree.

To sum up, this course summarizes the key points of historical novel creation from four aspects, including the conception of historical novel, the preparation of historical materials in advance, the contradiction arrangement of historical themes, the hierarchy arrangement of historical figures, and the power arrangement of historical events. I'll see you in the next video.

The IMAGINATION PROBLEM OF THIS LESSON: TRY TO REWRITE a STORY BASED ON A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND EXTRACTED ARBITRARILY FROM THE Annals OF The Three Kingdoms.