History, Philosophy, And Myth In Luo Guanzhong’s Three Kingdoms

Three Kingdoms is often described, somewhat misleadingly, as the Iliad of Chinese literature. It is a very long historical novel set during the protracted and troubled fall of the Han Dynasty, a period which corresponds almost exactly with the beginnings of the decline of the Roman Empire. ¹ It was distilled and adapted by Mao Lun and his son, Mao Zonggang, from an early sixteenth-century history of the period. And it was first published in 1679—that is, one year after the publication, in Paris, of a very different kind of historical novel. ² La Princesse de Clèves is a short romance, set in the French court of Henri II between late 1558 and late 1559. Although published anonymously, it has long been attributed to Madame de Lafayette. ³ Within their respective traditions, both works mark the beginning of a new kind of prose fiction: the novel.