吴敏树古文创作刍议

Study on the classical essays of Wu Minshu

吴敏树是清季湖南重要的作家,以古文成就焜耀于咸同文坛。郭崇焘称赞为"湖南两百年文章之盛推曾文正公及君"。其古文不以桐城派自居,同时私祧欧阳氏,得欧阳氏之逸,又独不喜归氏;风格词高体洁,超远旷逸,萧然物外,为古人之逸品。吴敏树古文创作有两大转关:其一是见知梅氏曾亮,反思古文作法,坚定了为学"必皆得力于古书"的观念,专治"发人"之文,而非"发于人"之文;其二是西学东渐,为古文注入了时代的脉搏,使古文充满了沉重的历史感,具有反映历史真实生活场景和补足历史文献的价值。

Wu Minshu was an important writer of Hunan in the late Qing Dynasty with the achievements of ancient prose, sparkling in the Xiantong literary world. Guo Chongtao praised Zeng Wenzheng and Wu Minshu the first in late two hundred year in Qing Dynasty. Wu Minshu thought his ancient prose did not belong to the Tongcheng School. His writing style inherited Ou Yangxiu of leisure characteristic and disliked the features of Gui Youguang, which was deemed as the carefree and leisure characters of elegant, pure and possessing natural grace. Wu Minshu prose creation had two breakthrough points： one was his acquaintance with Mei Zengliang and cultivated notion of writing enlightened prose, not enlightened prose in the procession of studying the way of writing; the other was the eastward transmission of western sciences, which made ancient prose keep pace with the times and have a serious sense of reflecting the history so as to have the value of enriching the historical documents.