中国古典小说历史叙事论(之一)

A Discussion of Historical Narrative in Chinese Classical Novels(Ⅰ)

中国史学之发达带来的一个直接后果,即造就了中国叙事艺术的范式与成熟。当然,这种叙事艺术并不是针对史诗或小说这类纯粹意义上的文学文本而言的,而是指《国语》《战国策》《史记》和《汉书》等之类史传文本所借以表述的策略和规则。因此,中国古典小说的叙事始终难以脱离当时历史话语的叙事模式,在一定程度上,历史还未能成为它的对象化表现内容。它对历史的观照还不是立于自己的基点上的,它所书写的历史尚不属于小说特有视域中的历史。

One direct consequence of advanced development of historical studies in China was the paradigm and maturity of Chinese narrative art,which was not intended for pure literary works like epics or novels,but born from narrative methods and tactics used in historic texts such as Guo Yu,Strategies of the Warring States,Historical Records,and The Book of Former Han.Therefore,traditional Chinese classical novels were largely confined to the historic narrative paradigm of the times,a literary perspective for history was not yet developed,and the history narrated in these works is not the history that is expected in real novels.