Another Interpretation Of History

Neo-Historical novel, first appeared in literary world in 1986, is a type of novel which shakes the historical values of the contemporary. These seventeen years witnessed great achievements in the research of the Neo-Historical novel. However, there haven't been, in the academic circle, a clear or powerful description of the most fundamental question, i.e. the definition of Neo-Historical novel. This paper, therefore, aims at redefining the new historical novel and making an overall description of its significance and narrative manner.The first part is mainly to give a rough description of the related knowledge. Such as, summarizing its definitions, expounding the concept of "history", and the rising and main contents of the western New Historicism, the differences between the Neo-Historical novel, the traditional historical novel and the revolutionary historical novel, as well as the literary relations between the Retrospective novel, the Avant-Garde novel and Neo-Historical novel. Finally, we seen that the Neo-Historical novel can be defined as a kind of novel which, in the light of historical narration, depicts stories about modern as well as ancient life, the life of the folks in particular, and it conveys "a history existing in the author's mind".The second part is a careful textual analysis which is based on such two categories as the historical context in narration and men in the historical context. This part aims at revealing the connotation and the historical values of the Neo-Historical novel and tries to depict a historical picture in writer's mind. The paper sums up the narration of historical context in the Neo-Historical novel as a history of survival, of family-vicissitudes, of daily life, and of wars. The interpretation is conducted respectively from the afflicted sense of survival; from the substitute of the fine narration of family history with that of national history; from the fragmented history to renewed multi-perspective angle toward history. In the part concerning men in historical contests, I draw a picture of the characters in Neo-Historical novels from such four aspects as the lifelization of history, the humanity rich in complexity, the expression of the sense of life, and the concern about death in history.The third part applies such theories as narrative angle, persons of narrations and narrative time in western study of narration. In addition to the analysis in the light of narrative manner, this part concerns as well the special role the occasional elements in history play in the narration. Finally, the paper concludes that history is the dialogue between the past and the present.