| Abstract |
Legends from Pangu to Tangyu is a Chinese historical novel from the Ming dynasty that recounts the history of ancient China. In this novel, certain historical accounts overlap with those in the Legend of Darkness, a folk songbook narrating the mythological history of ancient China, and Lushi, a historical text from the Southern Song dynasty written by Luo Mi. Specifically, the plot was developed by combining mythological elements from records of Chinese folk myths and legends with official texts and images about ancient Chinese history by historians. This study explored the following topics: (1) How the author of Legends from Pangu to Tangyu selects story elements from the aforementioned two types of text (i.e., official history records considered “higher-class/scholarly/written literature” vs. mythological writing categorized as “lower-class/folk/oral literature”); and (2) whether Legends from Pangu to Tangyu evolves from descriptions of historical facts as a historical novel and develops its own written consciousness of Chinese history. In addition, this study adopted a macroscopic approach to discussing the effects of historical texts on historical novels composed based on ancient Chinese history, to elucidate the value and position of such novels in Chinese mythological literature.
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