Since the new period, the study of The Romance of The Three Kingdoms has made great progress, its breadth and depth have greatly exceeded any previous historical period, and many new opinions have been put forward on a series of issues, and some new breakthroughs have been made. Among them, there are many controversies, the most striking of which are the following issues.
(1) about Luo Guanzhong's native place.
Since the Ming Dynasty, there have been many opinions about Luo Guanzhong's native place, such as Dongyuan, Taiyuan and Qiantang. Many editions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the Ming Dynasty are titled "Luo Guanzhong in the East", and written records such as Yong (Jiang Daqi) and Preface to the Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the first year of Jiajing are the main basis for saying "Dongyuan". 193 1 year, Zheng Zhenduo and others discovered the sequel of ghost books collected by tianyige, including the sentence "Luo Guanzhong, a native of Taiyuan". Many people regard this as "hard evidence" and think that Luo Guanzhong is a native of Taiyuan in Shanxi today. Since then, Luo Guanzhong's native place has been concentrated in the two theories of "Dongyuan" and "Taiyuan". Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, several authoritative literature histories and novel histories have advocated "Taiyuan". In recent ten years, relevant experts have launched academic debates around these two theories and published a series of influential papers.
On "Dongyuan". In Re-evaluation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Social Science Research No.4, 1982), Liu Zhixian thinks that Luo Guanzhong was called Dongyuan by a fool (Jiang Daqi) at the beginning of the popularity of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the first year of Jiajing. This kind of block printing is very fine, so it is not easy to make mistakes. Therefore, it seems more likely that Luo Guanzhong is from Dongyuan. The ghost book sequel was copied by ordinary people, and the word "Tai" may be a cursive mistake of the word "Dong". In the Popular Romance of Luo Guanzhong and the Three Kingdoms (Social Science ResearchNo. 1983,No. 1, No.2), Wang Qili thinks that Dongyuan is the origin of Luo Guanzhong. The reason why the sequel to Ghost Book was written as "Taiyuan people" is that its copywriting rarely knows Dongyuan and is familiar with Taiyuan, so it has made mistakes. Dongyuan was Dongping County in Han Dynasty, located in the east of Dongping County in Shandong Province. This can be found not only from the fact that most Ming editions "identified Luo Guanzhong as the primitive man of Yuan Dynasty", but also from the fact that Luo Guanzhong regarded Chen, the magistrate of Dongping, as the only well-described official in the whole biography of Water Margin. Because Chen and Luo Guan, the magistrate of Cixi County in Yuan Dynasty, were both disciples of the philosopher Zhao Xie and had political voice, Luo Guanzhong borrowed his name as the magistrate of Dongping in his hometown. In Where is the Origin of Luo Guanzhong (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 2nd Edition, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1986, August, 1), Diao thinks that most of the earliest editions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms are signed "Luo Guanzhong is in the East", while Luo Guanzhong's other novels include Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties and Biography of Sansui Pingyao. On the other hand, other records may be wrong.
On Luo Guanzhong (Journal of Shanxi Normal UniversityNo. 198 1,No. 1), Li Xiusheng thinks that Luo Guanzhong was originally from Taiyuan, and his ancestors may have moved to Hangzhou with the Song Dynasty, so he is also called a native of Hangzhou. In Ghost Story and Luo Guanzhong Sequel (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the second edition), Meng Fanren thinks that the author of Ghost Story Sequel is Luo Guanzhong's Forgotten Friends, and his record of Luo Guanzhong should be the most authoritative and credible. Luo Guanzhong's novels and operas are related to Shanxi and Taiyuan in the selection of materials: Guan Yu, the most outstanding and successful figure in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is a native of Xiezhou, Shanxi; Li Yuan and his son, the important figures in the Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties, set out from Taiyuan to seize the world. Li Cunxu is an important figure in the Biography of the History of Tang and Five Dynasties, and he is from Yanbei, Shanxi. Zhao Kuangyin in Zhao Kuangyin's Dragon and Tiger List once lived in Taiyuan before he made his fortune. Wen Yanbo in Pingyao legend is from Jiexiu, Shanxi. This "connection" is closely related to the writer's "hometown". There was a Roche family in Jinyang (Taiyuan) in Yuan Dynasty, and Luo Guanzhong probably belonged to this family. In Textual Research on the Native Place of Luo Guanzhong (Document Heritage No.2 1992), Liu Shide holds that "Taiyuan cannot be the fault of Dongyuan". It is also pointed out that there are three geographical errors in Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, all of which are within the scope of ancient Dongping, so it can be seen that Luo Guanzhong is not from Dongping.