Abstract

History is an important part of human civilization. People like to record their life and heroic deeds admired by the people to come and spread through the ages. History studies are full of difficulties, because doing textual research of historical data is really a serious and dull work. Most history books are written according the rules of being scientific and reliable, and some may follow these rules so strictly that the books become hard to understand.

Luckily, not all history books are written in this style. We can get plenty of delight as well as knowledge from Van Loon’s history fictions. Van Loon was a master of Public history. His numerous popular histories include The Story of Mankind (1921), The Story of the Bible (1923), Tolerance (1925), and The Story of America (1927).

    Tolerance (1925) is considered to be one of his representative works of humanism. Caring for human beings, respecting to humanity and pursuit of freedom are deeply reflected in this book. This book is a historical fiction. It tells the history of Western religion in a more casual and easy-understanding way. The purpose of writing Tolerance is to tell history both to the educated public and the general public.

    In this thesis, the author will analyze Tolerance as a historical fiction in three aspects: writing style close to fictional creation in Tolerance, historical conception revealed in Tolerance and its striking relation with Chinese historical novel.

Keywords: tolerance; writing style; public history; views on history; Chinese historical fictions

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

I. Introduction1

II. Writing Styles in Tolerance- 3

  1 Diction in Tolerance-4

2 Sentence Structure in Tolerance-6

III. Historical Conception Revealed from Tolerance8

1 Progressive History -8

2 Pragmatism History -10

3 Holistic History 11

IV. Affinity of Tolerance with Chinese Historical Novel-13

V. Conclusion-14

Reference15