空间意识变迁与晚清小说的现代性

The Transformation of Space Concepts and the Modernity of Novels in Late Qing Dynasty

晚清空间危机引发了社会秩序整体性崩溃,当"世界"作为变动不居的时空观念取代静态的华夏-万国观时,也正是社会达尔文主义在中国盛行之际。古典时空观发生裂变,"新小说"通过对瓜分危机的预言表达对亡国灭种的焦虑,大量海上书写传递了国人对旧空间秩序破裂、新的异质文化空间植入的惶恐和忧惧。政治乌托邦小说则通过对未来"中国"的勾勒将空间焦虑转化为时间激情,并借此激励文化身份认同、探讨政体国体建制、构成民族国家建构之前的文字想象,而现代文学就诞生于这被想象的现代"中国"之中。空间与空间意识的变迁不仅是晚清小说书写的背景,也时常成为小说主题,更与小说中大量的情境化场景的出现、人物心理和梦境的描写及风景的勾勒等形成同构关系,由此共同推动晚清小说叙述模式由叙述型向展示型变迁的现代性之路。

The social order in late Qing Ddynasty was totally collapsed because of the space crisis caused by the western invaders.Darwinism was widely spread and the conservative world view was terminated,as well as the concepts of barbarism and civilization was gradually replaced by the new vocabulary'world',which the Qing Dynasty people had no notion of it at all.A large number of literary works had been produced to express perplexes and anxieties about the old empire’s inevitable collapse as well as its unscientific and outdated worldview.Writers were so fond of'future'time because it was taken for granted that all of the space crisis would be solved by time,which would soon be proved to be blind optimism.The new world order was bold presented in utopian novels,while the modern China was born out of literal discussion before political revolution.In the meantime,the modernism of the Chinese literature was also germinating from the space characteristics of the late Qing novels.