National Language Collection (Revised Edition)

Author: Xu Yuangao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-06-01
Features: The Guoyu is an important ancient history book that has always been closely linked with the Zuo Zhuan, hence its reputation as the "[Spring and Autumn Expositions]". This book incorporates the achievements of various scholars' annotations of the Guoyu since the Qing Dynasty. In addition to punctuating the entire text, it places special emphasis on textual criticism, totaling over 1,160 annotations, each numbered and appended at the end of each volume. The prefaces and postfaces originally included in the book have been rewritten and appended at the end of the entire work.
The Guoyu is an important pre-Qin classic, with its content primarily focused on Spring and Autumn historical events. Many of its narratives are interwoven with those of the Zuo Zhuan. The Book of Han's Suwen Zhi classified it alongside the Zuo Zhuan under the "Spring and Autumn School," leading later scholars to call it directly the "Outer Commentary of the Spring and Autumn" (as opposed to the "Inner Commentary," referring to the Zuo Zhuan).
In his Shitong, Liu Zhi of the Tang Dynasty first distinguished the Zuo Zhuan and the Guoyu as two distinct literary forms, recognizing the Guoyu as one of the "Six Schools" of historical writing—what is now termed the "National History" genre. The Siku Quanshu of the Qing Dynasty, however, did not include a category for "National History" under the history section but classified it as "Miscellaneous History." Regardless of the interpretation, the Guoyu has long been regarded as a fundamental historical work, a consensus without dispute.
However, from a strict perspective, the Guoyu is not actually a history book; its purpose is not to record events. Nor is its classification by states its primary feature. The Guoyu's defining characteristic lies in its nature as a "record of discussions" (). The Shuowen Jiezi explains: "Yu () means to discuss." It further defines the character "" (yan) as: "Straightforward speech is called , while discussions and debates are called ." Thus, the Guoyu was originally a collection of discussions.