论禁毁对明清小说经典化的特殊作用

On the Special Role of Prohibition and Destruction in the Classicization of Novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties

明清官府严令禁毁小说,认为描写绿林好汉行侠仗义的小说会引导百姓聚啸山林,反抗官府;描写婚恋、家庭的小说伤风败俗,启人淫窦;清朝汉族文人撰写小说,居心叵测,隐含反清排满的内容。官府禁毁小说,不但没有毁掉小说,反而激发了读者的好奇心,被禁小说传播越来越广,商业嗅觉灵敏的书坊主纷纷刊行被禁小说,小说评点者一方面为被禁小说辩护,另一方面深入挖掘其思想与艺术价值。就是在官府禁毁、读者阅读、文人评点、书坊刻印的过程中,一些小说名著的经典地位得以确立。官府禁毁小说客观上对小说经典化起到了特殊作用,但并不是所有遭禁毁的小说都会成为经典。禁毁小说是一种文化专制政策,极大地损害了小说的创作与刊刻。

During the Ming and Qing dynasties,the government strictly prohibited and destructed novels,but this prohibition policy didn’t destroy the novels but sparked readers’curiosity.As a result,the banned novels spread more and more widely,and the shrewd bookshop owners published them one after another.Meanwhile,the critics defended them on the one hand and delved deeper into their values of thought and art on the other.In the process of government prohibition and destruction,reader consumption,scholarly critique,and bookshop publication,some novels became classics.Although the government’s prohibition and destruction objectively played a unique role in classicizing novels,not all banned novels would become classics.The prohibition and destruction of novels was a form of cultural authoritarianism that greatly damaged their creation and publication.