《文心雕龙》与中国文学的叙事传统

WEN XIN DIAO LONG and Narrative Tradition in Chinese Literature

探索中国文学的叙事传统及其与抒情传统的关系,不能不关注古代的文学理论、文学批评和对文学史的论述。体大思精的《文心雕龙》更是必须取资、必须认真钻研的重要对象。《文心雕龙》研究虽已汗牛充栋,却鲜见对刘勰文学叙事观点的发掘和论析者。从叙述学角度看《文心雕龙》,其前半部即文体论对各种文体规范、代表作品和发展演变轨迹之描述评论,实包含着不少与叙事和叙事传统有关的内容,可以见出这位严格立足于文学史实际、力图对文学写作实践作出抽象概括的理论家对叙事的基本态度和基本观点。其书后半部即所谓创作论论述了一系列文学理论问题,却没有集中阐论叙事问题的篇章,其所论以传统诗文理论为主。这也并非偶然,实际上反映了截至南朝齐梁时代文人们的主流文学观,也充分显示了中国文学抒情传统的深厚和强大。《文心雕龙》所表述的文学叙事观虽然相当朦胧粗浅,但联系整个中国文学史,特别是叙事文学和叙事理论的发展轨迹,则应该看到,以刘勰为代表的这种文学叙事观,不能不说是根深而流远。

Immense numbers of studies have been made of WEN XIN DIAO LONG, but few of them have ever attempted to explore and analyze Liu Xie＇ s view of literary narration. In terms of narratology, the former half of WEN XIN DIAO LONG, a theory of styles, described and commented varieties of stylistic criteria, representative works and traces of evolution, actually containing numbers of contents about narration and narrative traditions. This adequately represented Liu Xie the thoeretician＇ s primary attitude and viewpoint, who attempted to generalize practice of literary writing strictly based on the reality of literary history. The latter half of the work, a theory of literary writing, discussed a series of issues of literary theory, but devoted no chapter to focusing on literary narration, all the discussion centered with traditional poetic theory. This is not an accidental arrangement. Actually, it represen- ted the mainstream literary view up till the scholars in the South Dynasties and also showed the depths and strengths of lyrical tradition of Chinese literature.