A Study On The Image Of Monarchs In Zuo Zhuan

Zuo Zhuan is the significant documents in researching the history of the Spring and Autumn Period,which occupies an important position in history and literature.History books were written to record all sorts of words and actions of monarchs,whose main purpose was to "record facts".No matter when,the way of the history books to store history is nothing more than "recording words" and "recording facts",but whether it is words or facts,the initial core of it is to record "monarch".As a historical book,Zuo Zhuan records different kinds of figures with distinct characters,so it does not fully describe monarchs.But from the words and sentences in this book,we can find that monarchs are still one of the important aspects of the whole book.In the process of recording the words and actions of these monarchs,the author notes that the monarchs played an important role in the Spring and Autumn Period and had a significant impact on history.Therefore,he intended to describe monarchs deeply and vividly.This paper takes the monarchs in Zuo Zhuan as the research object,analyzing the image of various monarchs based on the method of classification,explore the literary and artistic techniques used in the aspect of shaping characters,and the rich value of the monarchy.The paper is divided into four chapters:The first chapter "the image of emperors of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in the decline of the royal".It specifically classifies monarchs in Zuo Zhuan,according to their character,ability,and other factors,listing them into "the confused ","the chaotic" and "the protesters ".And then combining with typical cases,the author analyzes each type of emperor.The author of Zuo Zhuan did not give monarchs a special description because of their position and statue,he treated them as ordinary people,gave them the objective real record,which implemented the traditional rules as a historiographer to write down the truth,neither improper praise nor hidden evil,but straightforward to record the portraits of the real monarchs.The second chapter " the image of emperors of the vassal under the turbulent situation ".The author takes emperors of the Spring and Autumn period as the main object for analysis,according to the character,ability,experience,historical merits,dividing them into "the wise ","the foolish" and " the commonplace " these three categories,and for each type of monarch for example analysis.Among them,the commonplace was previous researchers rarely involved.During the Spring and Autumn Period,there were a large number of vassal states,the frequent changing of monarchs is usual.Zuo Zhuan was not possible to record all monarchs,it just can only choose representative monarchs to record their main words and actions,and most of the recorded monarchs’ images were by no means single.In order to make the classification more reasonable instead of disorder,this paper only divides emperors of the vassal into three types by the conventional division criteria.The third chapter "the literary and artistic techniques of shaping the image of monarchs in Zuo Zhuan".It mainly discusses the literary and artistic techniques in Zuo Zhuan which the author of Zuo Zhuan used to shape monarchs’ image.This chapter is based on the examples of the origin,from these four aspects to analyze the literary and artistic technique,and the important role that these artistic techniques play in shaping the characters: flexible description to show the vivid images of people,reasonable way of narrative and material tailoring to rich characters,through contrast and highlighting to prominent the complex of character images,through comments to improve character images.The reason why characters seem lifelike in Zuo Zhuan is because that the author was not simply list characters’ life story to describe them,but used a variety of literature and art practices.The fourth chapter " the great value and influence of monarchs in Zuo Zhuan ",mainly from "punish wickedness and encourage virtue of moral education","advocating the political to uphold rituals and morality" and " influence to later literature " three aspects,discusses the influence of monarchs of Zuo Zhuan on later generations.Zuo Zhuan,both as a historical and literary classics,no doubt it has the great and far-reaching influence on the later generations,and the value of it is immeasurable.In particular,the reference it provides for the later literary is worth exploring.