《霍小玉传》李益“负约”说三问

Three Questions about Li Yi s“Breaking the Promise”in The Biography of Huo Xiaoyu

在对唐传奇小说《霍小玉传》中李益这一形象的传统研究中,“负心”说一直占据主流,然而现代学者关四平先生提出的“负约”说则认为,李益受社会婚姻制度和家庭的双重压迫,加之其个人性格等多方面原因才导致他未能履约,而非主观意愿上的“负心”。针对“负约”说提出三点疑问,认为李益“负约”说因缺乏对李益“博求名妓”这一动机的分析,过度夸大了李益对霍小玉的感情,回避了李益应有的对来自社会家庭的客观压力的认知和预判,因而存在可商榷之处。

In the traditional research on the image of Li Yi in The Biography of Huo Xiaoyu,a novel of the Tang Dynasty,“being ungrateful”has always been the mainstream.However,according to the theory of“breaking the promise”put forward by modern scholar Guan Siping,Li Yi failed to keep his promise due to the dual oppression of social marriage system and family,his personal characters and other reasons,rather than his subjective“being ungrateful”.This paper puts forward three questions about the theory of“breaking the promise”,and thinks that Li Yi s theory of“breaking the promise”is questionable because it lacks the analysis of Li Yi s motivation of“seeking a well-known prostitute”,over exaggerates Li Yi s feelings towards Huo Xiaoyu and avoids Li Yi s cognition and prediction of the objective pressure from the society and family.