Historical Records is China's first biographical general history. The author is Sima Qian, a historian of the Western Han Dynasty, and Lu Xun praised his works as "a historian's swan song, leaving Sao without rhyme."
I. The Book of Songs
The Book of Songs is the beginning of China's ancient poems and the earliest collection of poems. There were 305 ancient poems from 1 1 century BC to the 6th century BC. In addition, there are six poems with no words, which are called acoustic poems (Nanchang, Youkang, Chongwu and Youyi), reflecting the social outlook from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period.
The author of The Book of Songs is unknown. It was collected by Yin Jifu and edited by Confucius. At first, it was just called "Poetry" or "Poetry 300". In the Western Han Dynasty, it was regarded as a Confucian classic and called The Book of Songs. There are three kinds of editors in The Book of Songs: style, elegance and ode. "Wind" is a ballad of Zhou Dynasty. Elegant music is the official music of Zhou people, which is divided into harmony and elegance. Ode is a musical song used for sacrificial rites in Zhou and noble ancestral temples, which is divided into ode to, and ode to Shang.
The Book of Songs is rich in content, reflecting labor and love, war and corvee, oppression and resistance, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and feasting, and even astronomical phenomena, landforms, animals and plants. It is a mirror of the social life of the Zhou Dynasty.
Second, historical records.
Historical Records is a biographical history book written by Sima Qian, a famous historian in the Western Han Dynasty. It is the first biographical general history in the history of China, and is listed as the first of the "Twenty-four History", which records the history of more than 3,000 years from the legendary Huangdi era to the first year of founding ceremony, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Together with The History of the Later Han Dynasty, The History of the Later Han Dynasty and The History of the Three Kingdoms, they are called "the first four histories".
Historical Records had a far-reaching influence on the development of later historiography and literature. His original biographical method of compiling history was passed down by the "official history" of later generations. At the same time, Historical Records, as an excellent literary work, has an important position in the history of China literature. It is praised by Lu Xun as "the swan song of historians", which has no rhyme with Li Sao and has high literary value. Liu Xiang and others think that this book is "good in order and reason, argumentative but not flashy, qualitative but not vulgar".
Historical Records includes twelve biographies (recording the political achievements of emperors in past dynasties), thirty biographies (recording the rise and fall of vassal states and governors in Han Dynasty), seventy biographies (recording the words and deeds of important people, mainly describing the characters and ministers, and the last one is the preface), ten tables (chronology of major events) and eight books (recording various laws and regulations, such as etiquette, music, temperament, calendar, astronomy, etc.).