杨门女将故事源流初探

A Study on the Source of Woman Generals in the Yangs

杨门女将故事虽在明代正式成形,并写入长篇小说《杨家府演义》,却是文学题材和相关故事内容长期发展演变,并应当时社会需要而产生的结果。女将题材应是由唐代传奇中女侠题材发展演变而来,而杨门女将的故事创作又很可能直接受到《水浒传》的影响。杨门女将的第一代佘太君这个人物,可能早在宋朝就被虚构出来,但从宋朝经元朝,到明朝前期,无论是小说和戏曲中,杨门女眷都一直充当配角,而且亦未见以女将的形象出现。杨门女将的故事应是集中创作于明朝中期,而在一开始就有可能存在不同版本。从宋到明,女侠和女将小说所反映出的社会价值观,应是与理学在人们思想意识中的影响不断深入相一致的,这亦可看作杨门女将故事源流一个潜在的方面。

Although the legends of woman generals in the Yangs were formed and written in the novel Yang's Historical Romance in the Ming Dynasty,they were the results of the long development of literary subject matters and related stories,together with the social needs at that time.The subject matter of female general should be traced back to the swordswomen appearing in the legendaries in the Tang Dynasty,while the stories of the woman generals in the Yangs might be influenced by The Water Margin directly.Ms.She,the first figure of woman generals in the Yangs might be created as early as in the Song Dynasty.But from Song to Yuan,or even to the early stage of the Ming Dynasty,the figures of female Yang had always not been the heroines in novels and dramas,and never appeared as the images of woman general.Based on the above evidence,the stories of woman generals in the Yangs should be intensively created in the middle stage of the Ming Dynasty,and probably there were different versions about it at the very beginning.From Song to Ming,the social values reflected by the legends of swordswomen and women generals should be consistent with the growing influence upon people's minds by Neo-Confucianism,which could be taken as the potential aspect of the source of woman generals in the Yangs legendary.