I. Discipline
Ji is the outline of the whole book, which records the words and deeds of emperors according to the time of year and month. Five of them recorded the history of pre-Qin, followed by the five emperors of Xia, Yin, Zhou and Qin. There are seven articles recording the history of Qin and Han Dynasties, followed by Qin Shihuang, Chu Xiangyu, Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang, Gao Zhi, Han Heng, Han Jingdi Liu Qi and Emperor Wudi.
Second, the table
Table lists lineages, people and historical events in tables.
Third, books.
The Book describes the development of the system, involving the system of rites and music, astronomical military law, social economy, river geography and other aspects.
Fourth, family.
The "aristocratic family" describes the historical relics of the vassal's seal of the country and the deeds of particularly important people.
Biography of verbs (abbreviation for verb)
Biography is the life stories of other representatives except emperors and generals and the biographies of ethnic minorities.
The artistic features of Historical Records.
The unique narrative art of Historical Records pays great attention to the deeper exploration of the causal relationship of events, synthesizes various historical books of the previous generation, forms a unified statement, and describes all historical times before the middle of the Western Han Dynasty with twelve biographies and ten tables as the representatives vertically, and eight biographies, thirty biographies and seventy biographies as the representatives horizontally, leading all classes, nationalities, fields and industries, forming a comfortable structure criss-crossing.
In addition, Historical Records also has many unique features in terms of composition, sentence patterns and words, which is unique and unconventional, and produces unique effects with its novelty and variety. Biography of Xiang Yu is one of the most important and wonderful chapters in Historical Records. Historically, it specifically recorded the magnificent historical situation during the struggle between Chu and Han.
Literally speaking, this article is the earliest masterpiece of narrative art centered on characters in China's prose. The thrilling war picture described in this article, as well as the classic tragic hero image of Xiang Yu, have had a great influence on all kinds of literary works in later generations.
The characters are arranged in both name and reality, echoing before and after. Biographies at all levels in Historical Records are arranged in chronological order, but they also take into account the internal relations between biographies and follow the principle of similar items.
That is, when the same thing involves several people, it is described in detail in one place, but omitted in another place, and sometimes marked with "words in something", which not only avoids repetition, but also plays a role in highlighting the main character of the characters.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Historical Records (Biography and Historical Works of Sima Qian)