Narrative Devices in the Shiji: Retelling the Past
Lei Yang, "Narrative Devices in the Shiji: Retelling the Past "
English | ISBN: 1438497210 | 2024 | 200 pages | EPUB, PDF | 570 KB + 2 MB
English | ISBN: 1438497210 | 2024 | 200 pages | EPUB, PDF | 570 KB + 2 MB
Narrative Devices in the Shiji: Retelling the Past offers the first systematic analysis of narratives in early Chinese historical writings from 400 BCE to 100 CE, with a focus on the Shiji (Records of the Historian), a vast collection of historical accounts completed by Sima Qian (145-86 BCE). For centuries, the dominant approach to the Shiji has been to infer Sima's intentions from his biographical experiences and subsequently project them back into the text. This has caused the import of the work to be overshadowed by Sima's tragedy of castration, and has minimized the question of how narrative as a form affects the text's interpretation. Lei Yang fills the gap by exploring how Sima manipulated the Shiji's narrative structure to represent the past. Drawing on Gérard Genette's narratological theories, the book examines how sequences of events build causality, what is slowed down and sped up to manage information control, and how the text provides multiple perspectives on the same events. Redefining the
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