宗教真实与文学想象——《太平广记》仙传小说的叙事特征

Religious Truthfulness and Literary Imagination:Narrative Characteristics of Mythological Novels in T'ai-p'ing Kuang-chi

仙传小说是《太平广记》辑录的重要题材类型,作为一种宗教文学它具有独特的叙事特征,即以史传叙事结构展示神仙故事的宗教真实性,以模糊叙事语句遮蔽神仙及其仙迹超现实的虚幻性,以对比、衬托等叙事技巧凸显神仙生命的长生久视,以程式化的叙事模式强化神仙可求的宗教目的。这种独特的叙事方式兼顾了仙传小说宗教性与文学性的双重特性,弥合了"宗教真实"与"历史真实"的内在冲突。

Mythological novels are an important subject matter in T＇ ai-p＇ing Kuang-chi. As a religion- based literary genre, it has unique narrative skills, featured by revealing the religious truthfulness of mytholog- ical tales in such a narrative structure as in historiography, obscuring the surreal illusiveness of immortals and their behaviors and deeds with fuzziness in narrating, highlighting the long life and foresight of immortals with narrative techniques such as comparison and contrast, and iterating the accessibility to immortality in a stereo- typed narrative pattern. Such unique narrative characteristics, which take account of the duality of mythologi- cal novels in religion and literature, have successfully resolved the inherent conflict between ＂religious truth- fulness＂ and ＂historical truthfulness＂.