Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Volumes 1, 2, and 3) (Treasured Complete Embroidered Illustrations Edition)

Author: Luo Guanzhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is a famous and outstanding long, chaptered historical novel in the history of Chinese fiction. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written by Luo Guanzhong, a person from the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Before its completion, the "Three Kingdoms stories" had already undergone hundreds of years of historical development. In the Tang Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms stories were widely circulated, even children were familiar with them. With the development of urban literature, the "storytellers" of the Song Dynasty had already specialized in telling Three Kingdoms stories, which were then called "telling the Three Kingdoms." The Romance of the Three Kingdoms that emerged in the Yuan Dynasty was essentially a manuscript used by storytellers. Although it was relatively brief and rough, it had already begun to take shape like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Based on folk legends and the creations of artists, Luo Guanzhong also referred to the materials cited in Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms and Pei Songzhi's annotations (including materials from Records of the Time and its annotations), and after tremendous creative effort, he wrote the magnificent masterpiece—Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The full title is Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Author, Ming Luo Guanzhong. There are differing accounts of Luo Guanzhong's life. According to the Continued Records of Anti-Bureaucracy by Jia Zhongming, Luo Guanzhong's name was Ben, from Taiyuan, and he was known as the "Nomadic Scholar of the Lakes and Seas." Some say he was from Qiantang, while others say he was from Luling. It is said that he studied under Shi Nai'an and collaborated with him in writing novels, including Chronicles of Sui and Tang and Three Demons Subduing the Monstrous Beasts. He also wrote the Meeting of the Wind and Clouds. This book was compiled based on Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms and Pei Songzhi's annotations, as well as the Yuan-era Romance of the Three Kingdoms and folk-told Three Kingdoms stories. It depicts the historical story of the conflicts between the three states of Wei, Shu, and Wu during the late Eastern Han Dynasty, reflecting the social turmoil of the time and exposing the power struggles among the nobles within the dynasty. The entire book is clearly imbued with feudal orthodox ideology, revering Liu Bei and suppressing Cao Cao, and it often denigrates the Yellow Turban peasant uprising. The story is intricate, the style is grand, the language is concise, and the structure is rigorous. The descriptions of battle scenes, the psychology of characters, and the portrayal of their images have reached a level of perfection, akin to reaching the peak of mastery. For example, the characters of Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhou Yu, and Sun Quan have been so deeply ingrained in people's minds that they are known even to children and have been beloved by generations of literary enthusiasts, earning the reputation of a "scholar's book" and gaining fame far and wide.