在中国古文字中“叙事”的“叙”字与“序”、“绪”二字相通,表明了事件之内空间、时间和因果的构成方式,而“叙事”的“事”字与“史”字的渊源强调了文字叙事的主要目的 - 反映历史。[ 杨义,中国叙事学,北京:人民出版社,1997. 第10-11页。]诚如J.Hills Miller所言,事件(events)与故事(story)的本质不同在于,事件在转变成为故事时要经过叙事(narrative)的过程,而叙事是作者重新整合(reordering)事件内部的时间、空间以及因果关系,使原本的事件具有了新的价值。这种价值不仅在于印证(affirmation and reinforcement)当时历史社会的价值观念,更重要的则是“究天人之际,通古今之变”,在人类伦理观中寻找更精妙的宇宙观,在故事的反复传诵中“明善恶,示训诫”。[ “Reordering by narrative may therefore have as its function, as I have suggested, the affirmation and reinforcement, even creation, of the most basic assumption of culture about human existence,about time, destiny, selfhood, where we come from, what we ought to do while we are here, where we go - the whole course of human life. We need the same stories over and over, then, as one of the most powerful perhaps the most powerful, of ways to assert the basic idology of our culture.”, Narrative, in Critical Terms for Literary Study, by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughblin eds., (Chicago and London: The university of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 71-72.]