殷商甲骨卜辞的散文成就

On the Significance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Shang Dynasty in the Writing of Prose

殷商甲骨卜辞是我国迄今发现的最早的散文文献,它的艺术成就主要体现在三个方面:一是从中国文学发展史宏观上看,甲骨卜辞堪称中国记叙散文之祖,已经具备记叙散文的时间、地点、人物、起因、经过、结果这些基本要素,甲骨卜辞记叙事件首尾的写法,对此后记事散文产生深远影响;二是受书写工具影响,甲骨卜辞用字特别精炼,讲究措辞精确。验辞之中有少量描写文字,其中不乏精彩之笔;三是甲骨卜辞开始运用一些简单的比喻修辞手法。

Oracle bone inscriptions of Shang Dynasty are the earliest prose documents found so far in China, of which the artistic achievements are mainly embodied in three aspects. First, from the macroscopic point of view of the history of Chinese literature development, Oracle inscriptions can be regarded as the ancestor of Chinese narrative prose, which have had such basic elements the narrative prose has as the time, place, character, cause, process and result. The writing style , namely the echoing between the beginning and the end in the narration of events, has a deep significance in the writing of the narrative prose. Secondly, influenced by the writing tools, the wording of the oracle inscriptions is concise and precise, in which some descriptive words are brilliant. Thirdly, some simple figurative rhetoric techniques begin to be used in the oracle inscriptions.