“稗贩之学”中的新天地——评《家园与天下:明代书文化与寻常阅读》

The New World in “Baifan zhi xue”: A Review of Home and World: Editing the “Glorious Ming” in Woodblock-Printed Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

何予明的《家园与天下:明代书文化与寻常阅读》是一部以非经典文本为主要材料,试图重构晚明阅读世界的作品。此书关注的是被四库馆臣称为“稗贩之学”的书籍,作者认为这些不入流的平庸之作,在明代拥有远非边缘性的社会作用和地位;并将此类书籍纳入版本研究与书籍史研究的框架内,目的在于从被忽视、被贬低的明代非经典文本中体察明代真正流行的阅读文化。该书是近年来书籍史领域中不可多得的佳作,围绕稗贩书籍所激发的多样化阅读、书籍消费在家园与天下两种层面展开论述。

Home and World: Editing the “Glorious Ming” in Woodblock-Printed Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries written by He Yuming, is a work that tries to reconstruct the reading world of the late Ming Dynasty by using non-classical texts as the main materials. This book focuses on the books which were called “baifan zhi xue”(trivial works) by Siku guanchen(the officials who compiled the complete collection of Chinese classics for the imperial library). The author believes that these books considered to be inferior and banal had a role that was far more than marginal in the Ming society. The purpose of including this category of books into the framework of edition research and book history research is to understand the real popular reading culture of the Ming Dynasty from the neglected and devalued non-classical texts. This study is a rare masterpiece in the field of book history in recent years. It focuses on the diversified reading subjects and the consumption of books inspired by baifan zhi xue, with respect to both the “home” and the “world”.