Literary criticism of The Records of the Historian reached its climax in the Qing Dynasty. The literary criticism of the records in this period furthered the precedent traditions by involving extensive issues, including both traditional and newlyintroduced ones, and theoretically summarizing the writing style of the book. Those literary criticisms involved mainly narration and personage description, appropriately analyzing specific narrative clues, character psychology, and descriptive details. The critics in those days also laid emphasis on the key subjects of chapters of the book, paying attention to the hierarchical structure and analysis of characterization. The flourishing of literary criticism of the records resulted from both precedent gathered achievements and specific cultural and academic backgrounds of the time.

literary criticism of the Qing Dynasty; The Records of the Historian; literary criticism