晚清小说中的外星叙事及其现代意义

Extraterrestrial Narratives in Late Qing Novels and Their Modern Significance

晚清小说中出现了不少有关外星的叙述。外星叙事的出现虽然与中国观星传统有关,但与近代天文学知识的传播关系更紧密。近代天文学知识打开了晚清小说认识外星的新角度,使它们能从科学、幻想和理想等多重维度叙述外星,赋予外星不同于传统的审美形态和象征意义。以外星为参照,晚清小说形成了对于地球的新观感,通过建构外星与地球的关系,把“宇宙”打造成为再塑“中国”的另一个空间。晚清小说忧虑外星可能带给地球的影响,经常叙述外星碰撞地球引发末日事件,以抒发蕴希望于绝望的危机情绪。小说中的外星叙事既反映了科学知识在晚清输入中国的历史事实,也体现出知识者在新旧时代交汇时的复杂心态。

A number of narratives about extraterrestrials appear in novels of the late Qing Dynasty.Although the emergence of extraterrestrial narratives is related to the Chinese tradition of stargazing,it is more closely related to the spread of modern astronomical knowledge.Modern astronomical knowledge opened up new perspectives on extraterrestrials in late Qing novels,enabling them to narrate extraterrestrials from multiple dimensions,including science,fantasy and ideals,and giving them a different aesthetic form and symbolic meaning from traditional ones.Using the alien planet as a reference,the novels of the late Qing Dynasty developed a new view of the Earth,and by constructing a relationship between the alien planet and the Earth,the“universe”became an alternative space for the reinvention of China.Concerned about the possible impact of extraterrestrials on the Earth,late Qing novels often narrate the apocalyptic events caused by alien collisions with the Earth in order to express the crisis of hope over despair.The alien narratives in the novels reflect both the historical fact that scientific knowledge was imported into China in the late Qing Dynasty and the complex mindset of intellectuals at the intersection of the old and the new.