It is known that the earliest edition was published in the first year of Jiajing (1522), and it is called Jiajing edition, and its title is "The Biography of Pingyang Hou, Jin and Later Learning Robben".
After Jiajing edition, a large number of new periodicals appeared, all of which were mainly Jiajing edition, and only did some work such as illustration, textual research, annotation, addition and deletion of words, volume number and sorting purpose. During the Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty, Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang and his son made some revisions to Jiajing's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, mainly sorting out the contents and modifying the wording. Change poetry, etc. The content has not changed much.
Extended data
The History of the Three Kingdoms written by Chen Shou in Jin Dynasty is the earliest source of the story of the Three Kingdoms, but it is a biographical history book with a brief record and an outline. Pei Songzhi, a native of the Southern Song Dynasty, added many anecdotes to Notes on the History of the Three Kingdoms, which greatly enhanced the legend and readability.
Liu Zhixi, a historian in the middle Tang Dynasty, said in Shi Tong that the story of Zhuge Liang's death has been "learned from his journey and spread to many people", which shows that the story of the Three Kingdoms has been widely spread among the people during this period.
There is a poem in Li Shangyin's "Pride of Children" in the late Tang Dynasty, which shows that the story of the Three Kingdoms was known to women and children at the latest in the late Tang Dynasty, and the story of the Three Kingdoms became more popular in the Song Dynasty through artists' performances and rap, which has shown a distinct tendency of "respecting Liu and belittling Cao". The stories of the Three Kingdoms in the Jin and Yuan Dynasties were put on the stage in large numbers, and there were also many stories of the Three Kingdoms in school books and dramas.
According to Ghost Record and Taihe Yinzhengpu, there are nearly 30 kinds of works telling the story of the Three Kingdoms in Yuan Zaju alone. The Jin Dynasty recorded in the Record of Dropping Out of Farming includes Xiangyang Club, Liu Bei, Lu Bu and Chibi Soldiers.
During the period from Yuan Yingzong to Zhi Zhi (1321-1323), the Commentary on the Three Kingdoms published by Shi Yu in Xin 'an was the earliest and only commentary on the story of the Three Kingdoms. This book is the final version of the story of the Three Kingdoms in folklore, with about 80,000 words. It is divided into three volumes: upper, middle and lower. Each volume is divided into two columns, with pictures in the upper column and text in the lower column.
The book tells the story of Sima Zhong's escape from prison. The main story begins with the loyalty of Liu Guan and Zhang Taoyuan and ends with Zhuge Liang's death. Judging from the content and structure of Pinghua, it is roughly as big as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but the overall description is sloppy, the words are obscure, and the story is bizarre, which is mostly inconsistent with the official records.
There are also many fallacies in names and place names, and it seems that the works of folk artists have not been polished by literati. Judging from the above records and surviving works, from the end of the Tang Dynasty to the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the popular stories of the Three Kingdoms became more and more abundant, which provided sufficient conditions for the creation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
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