Abstract: In Zi Zhi Tong Jian, the narratives of characters follow the chorological order. The characters’s activities are accordingly strictly confined to the definite time slots so as to form sharp contrasts with biography-oriented history works. The paper argues that the intermittent narrative of characters in this classic enables the author to reveal, to a greater extent, the historical context, to put the characters against the complex historical settings, and to provide supplementary information of the subject obscure to readers, for the purpose of presenting a rounded image of the subject’s character. 

Key words: Zi Zhi Tong Jian; scattered narrative; Yue Yi; Liu Cong; An Lushan

Liu Jialin is Professor of Literature in School of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is Associate Director of the Center for Life-Writing Studies at SJTU. He is the author of The Poetical World of Vladimir Nabokov (Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2012). His Chinese translations include Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009) and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2011).