莫言小说与明清历史演义小说传统

Mo Yan's Novels and the History Novels of Ming-Qing Dynasty

莫言小说的历史叙事与《三国演义》等明清历史演义小说有密切关系。莫言小说主要汲取了后者的史诗规模与实录品格,结构上以编年体为主,兼有纪传体与大事本末体等文体特点,又将与历史演义小说中与此相对应的书写重大历史人物、重大历史事件的大历史书写置换为以底层民众的日常生活和私人性的经验为主的小历史书写,主旨倾向上以非道德化取代道德化。这种继承与改造使他的历史小说与传统历史小说拉开了距离,又不同于一般新历史主义小说仅止于与"红色官史"对抗,而是更进一步借助史传传统"有意味的形式"将其所书写的民间史从边缘化不入流的地位升格到正史甚至人类史的地位。

The historical narration of Mo Yan’s novels is closely related to historical novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties such as "The Romance of The Three Kingdoms". Mo Yan’s novels mainly draw on the latter’s epic scale and actual character. Mo Yan’s novels are mainly structured in chronological styles, and have the literary style of biographical genre and the historical style presenting in separate accounts of important events. Instead of writing of crucial historical figures and events under the great historical background, Mo Yan chose the small historical writing based on the daily life and private experience of the underlying people. Besides, his novels favor non-moral themes over moral themes. These characteristic can be seen as the inheritance and transformation which has opened up the distance between Mo Yan’s novels and traditional historical novels. His novels are also different from the general New Historicist novels which are only in confrontation with the "red official history" in that his novels have further upgraded the folk history from the marginalized status to the official status and even promote it to human history with the help of "meaningful form" in historical traditions.