Narrative Of "the Romance Of The Three Kingdoms" Space

The historical romance has a masterpiece------the Romance of ThreeKingdoms at beginning of it, which draws the attentions of one after another generation's scholars by its outstanding art achievements and rich thoughts. Facing the research situations of the Romance of Three Kingdoms in the 20th century, how to do for the new and reasonable viewpoint? Since narration in the west was introduced in China, narration has become an important tool of the novel critique. But we must admit there is a special Chinese system in the Chinese narrative arts, which is the spatial tendency. Of course, the Romance of Three Kingdoms has this characteristic. Firstly, the novel's content decides spatial narrative art. Secondly, Chinese traditional narrative arts offer the possibility of spatial narration. This thesis analyses the three kinds of space of the Romance of Three Kingdoms: the fundamental space (the space of God's will, geographical space), the main space (palace, battlefield, army tent), the external space (comment), and expounds the relations of all kinds of the space, and the ways of space shifting and the rhythm of the spatial narration.I The Fundamental SpaceThe Fundamental space involves the space of God's will, and geographical space.The space of God's will is founded of 120 times of description, which influences the Romance of Three Kingdoms' narrative orientation in total and critiques of the characters in details.The geographical space is founded by two ways. One is the long period general plan of the important official in every kingdoms, another is small but complete geographical conditions in every battle.II The Main SpaceThe main space involve palace, battlefield and army tent.The space of palace mainly narrates the relations of the monarch and his subjects, which portrays three kinds of characters: coward imperialfamily, officials loyal to their sovereign and treacherous court officials. The space is imbued with bloody and terror.Every space of army tent in different military groups has distinguishing feature. The army tent's space of Cao-wei group is founded by intelligence and has the feature of pure and harmony, the army tent's space of Liu-shu group is full of complicated relations, while the space of Shun-wu's army tent is characterized by dramatization.The battlefields are divided into common battlefields and breaking-out of the encirclement, .In the later kind of battlefields, the other often select the escaper as the focus of narration. By analysis, we can know, Cao-wei battlefields are substantial and concentrated; Liu-shu battlefields are exquisite and vast; Shun-wu battlefields are similar with Cao-wei battlefields, however, the portrayal of them is simple. III The External SpaceThe external space is founded of many comment poems, which balances the one hundred history with different ways, such as caring for Shu-han characters, sighing out God's will. At the same time, the comment space is the symbol of the Chinese classical narration.IV The Space's Relations, Space Shift and Narrative RhythmIn all kinds of space, the fundamental space influences the main space; the out-of-balance of palace accumulates the energy to open the other main space; army tent's space will decide the battlefields' space; the external space balances the above space.The shift of space has three methods.In the Romance of Three Kingdoms; the characteristics of narrative time, space arrangement, and space shift methods, help to bring about the change of the narrative rhythm.