Comparing With The Historical Biography On Figures And The Historical Novel On Narration

In ancient China, novel was affiliated to history. Whether the stories conform to historical facts or not was always taken as a criterion for judging its value in the historical novel criticism. But in the west, literature always is higher than the history. Taking Aristotle as an example, he thought that literature has more meaning of philosophy and more universality than history. Neohistoricism deems that the history read by us was narrated and the deeper structure of history is of "literature nature". It is this idea that has provided the new foundation to compare literature and history.At present, the researches on literature and history based on the texts are rare. According to narratology, we can know, the historical biography on figures and the historical novel not only have the common "literature nature" but also have diversities on narrative discourse, logic, time, frequency, rhythm, point of view and so on.Taking Kang-xi as an example, there are great diversities between narrative of novel and that of historical biography on figures in narrative discourse. For the novel, narration is not only regarded as means but also as an aim, the discourse of historical novel puts more emphasis on signifian; the discourse of historical biography on figures pays more attention to designatum, and discourse is only regarded as means not as an aim in the historical narrative.The logic of novel is to narrate separately the causes, courses and results of the two contrary sides, that is, the two sides have equal positions in the narrative. The logic of history is only to narrate the cause, course and result of one side yet.Although the narrative time of historical biography on figures and historical novel is realigned in the text but their narrative patterns specifically exhibited are different. In the text of historical biography on figures, it adopts the one dimensional linear clue to link up the narrative generally which is approximately similar to the arranged story. But in the text of historical novel, it is so flexible that it can narrate on the reverse order of time.On the narrative rhythm, though the long period of time narrative both exists in the historical novel and the historical biography on figures, the rhythm of historical novel is far slower than that of the historical biography on figures.According to narratology, the historical biography on figures is a kind of historical narrative while the historical novel is a kind of literature narrative. By comparing the historical novel with the historical biography on figures based on narratology, we can further deduce the relation of literature narrative and historical narrative. For example, the narrator of literature narrative is ahead of the events but the historical narrator who tells about the past gets behind with the events. The world of the historical has a counterpart in the real world that can be tested. But the world of literature narrative is a closed system which does not have a counterpart in the real world yet.