試論《東周列國志》對周桓王之形塑及評騭

<p>孔子主張「禮樂征伐自天子出」，但周桓王因與鄭莊公交惡，不滿周王室二任天子面對鄭莊公總是處於劣勢。桓王即位後先是與鄭國交惡情況已無力迴轉。周桓王聯軍攻鄭，卻敗於繻葛，桓王本人更於此役受射箭中傷。鄭卻壓倒性的戰勝周室的聯軍，導致周天子顏面盡失，王朝秩序亦蕩然無存，「尊王」的時代一去不復返。「禮」是周朝立國之基礎，凡事都堅持按禮樂制度辦事，為西周之周公所制定，但在很多地方，均已過時了。眾多諸侯也一一不再遵循，周桓王時期雖仍能影響虢國，但已無力阻止王室轉衰，亦無力阻止諸侯間的互相攻伐。《東周列國志》採用「歷史演義」手法，依序道出周桓王之委屈與還擊，卻也將周桓王思維不夠縝密、不擅用人等埋伏在隱線裡。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Confucius advocated that &quot;the courtesy and conquest came from the emperor.&quot; However, due to the disagreement between the king and the emperor Zheng Zhuang, the second emperor of the royal family was always at a disadvantage when facing the emperor Zheng Zhuang. Zhou Zhen Wang Lianjun attacked Zheng, but lost to Yu Ge. Zheng’s overwhelming victory over Zhou’s coalition forces led to the loss of Zhou Tianzi’s face and the disappearance of the international order. The era of &quot;respecting the king&quot; is gone forever. Many princes no longer followed one by one, and King Zhou Xuan had no power to prevent the royal family from turning down, nor could they prevent each other from attacking each other. &quot;Eastern Zhou Dynasty Records&quot; adopts the &quot;historical romance&quot; method, which in turn reveals the grievances and counterattacks of Zhou Zhenwang, but also ambushes Zhou Zhou’s inadequate thinking and is not good at using people.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

The Oxford History of Romanian Morphology

Romanian is one of the most morphologically complex Romance languages. This book is the first ever comprehensive and accessible account of how that morphological system evolved. Here are some of the most salient morphological traits distinctive of this language: it possesses an inflexional case system; unlike other Romance languages, it has an inflexional vocative; the morphological marking of number reached such a level of unpredictability that, for most nouns (and for many adjectives), the form of the plural must be independently specified alongside that of the singular; in addition to masculine and feminine, it seems to possess a third gender, often referred to as a ‘neuter’; its verb system contains a non-finite form, which apparently continues the Latin supine; the infinitive has undergone a morphological split such that one form functions now purely as a noun, while the other remains purely a verb; the distinctive morphology of the subjunctive has largely disappeared; lastly, noun and verb morphology are deeply permeated by the effects of successive sound changes, which have created remarkably complex patterns of allomorphy. The origins of many of these developments are problematic, indeed controversial. Moreover, they are problematic in ways that are of interest not only to broader historical Romance linguistics but, even more broadly, to morphological theory tout court. The Oxford History of Romanian Morphology shows how the features listed here are relevant to students and scholars interested in historical morphology generally no less than they are to Romance linguists.

Engin

The main texts under consideration in this article are two French-language Alexander romances written in the second half of the twelfth century, discussed in relation to the Latin historical, romance, and naturalist traditions that form the backbone of the medieval tradition of Alexander the Great in medieval Europe, and in particular in relation to the literary tradition that starts with Pseudo-Callisthenes’s Greek Romance of Alexander. The aim is to show how Alexander was used not simply as an icon of secular or military power but also as an important figure for understanding the relationship between the imagination, technological invention, and discovery of new knowledge, which necessarily entails questions of prestige and power. Alexander’s ingenuity, which manifests both as verbal trickery and in the invention of new machines, is shown to be fundamental for a certain model of knowledge-acquisition that sees natural truths as hidden and in need of tools to be extracted. This ingenuity is shown, also, to be closely connected to the inventions of writers of romance, and the article suggests the specific importance of the Alexander material in the history of medieval romance literature.

Frank Yerby and his Readers

This chapter discusses why and how Frank Yerby’s readers diminished greatly within a few years of his death. This essay also considers how Yerby may not have received support from African-American literary community leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes that may have kept his novels in print. Additionally, because Yerby worked in the historical romance genre, or what he referred to as costume dramas, where most of his protagonists are white, is explored as a possible correlation to his disappearing readership. Essentially, knowing Yerby’s history as an author and seeing how critics categorized his books as disposable fiction is necessary in understanding who his readers were and why he went from bestselling novelist to nearly being forgotten.