A Study Of Liu Shaoban’s Historical Papers

Liu Shaoban,with the character "Ji Gong" and the name "Jiuwan",was born in Sanyuan,Shaanxi Province,and was a famous ancient writer in the mid Qing Dynasty.In his ancient literary works,historical essays account for a large proportion,showing extraordinary talent in both the subject matter,ideological orientation,and artistic characteristics,melting solid and profound knowledge and generous and unrestrained feelings into one.Studying its historical papers can provide a glimpse of the literary ideas from the early Qing Dynasty to the middle Qing Dynasty.From the perspective of subject matter and content,Liu Shaoban’s historical papers focus mainly on emperors and vassals,focusing on historical figures.His thinking is agile,his ideas are novel,and his views and evaluations of characters are not limited to stereotypes.They often come up with their own ideas and make people refreshing.In addition,Liu Shaoban also has a far superior understanding of ancient regulations and systems than ordinary scholars,and can provide unique suggestions for improvement on the basis of commenting on their advantages and disadvantages;From the perspective of ideological orientation,Liu Shaoban took Confucianism as the standard and expressed the traditional Confucian concepts of "the people are valued,the monarch is light",advocating benevolence,wisdom,and courage in his historical essays,as well as his dialectical thinking on "righteousness" and "benefit","loyalty" and "filial piety".Secondly,through his writing of historical papers,Liu Shaoban demonstrated his emphasis on "seeking correction" and "reference" in historiography.Thirdly,in his comments on literary phenomena in history,Liu Shaoban embodied the literary ideology of "literature carries the Tao" and "diction upholds the essence of style";From the perspective of artistic characteristics,Liu Shaoban’s historical essays seek novelty and are well structured.They are adept at using the methods of positive and negative contrastive argumentation and fallacy reduction argumentation,making the logic of the article impeccable.In addition,his carefully matched sentence patterns and rhetorical techniques give his historical essays a rich momentum.The value of Liu Shaoban’s historical essays lies in their manifestation of the mainstream spirit of the times,which is different from the style of the late Ming Dynasty.They reveal his concern for the national economy and people’s livelihood,as well as his ability to emphasize rational thinking.In the Qianjia literary world,Liu Shaoban’s historical essays embody the style concept of combining the two literary styles of "scholar’s prose" and "literati’s prose".