《蒙学报》现代性探索的路径与反思

Paths and reflections on the quest of modernity in The Children’s Educator

晚清社会变革中,《蒙学报》以“反传统”为旗帜。以叶瀚为代表的知识分子心怀教育救国之志,通过近代传媒,尝试对传统蒙学读物进行多方面的改造。其引介国外文本,采编民间文本,重述历史故事,将语言口语化、故事图像化,使受众分级化,针对儿童教育需要,发出了儿童文学的先声。而囿于教育政策与政治形势,《蒙学报》在创新的同时处处受制于传统,不自觉地落入传统的窠臼中。它在“延续传统”和“反传统”的过程中,纠缠着文人阶层与民众阶层的对话、官方引导与民间诉求的博弈、本土文化与外来文化的碰撞、新旧力量的对峙。它改造传统意图与遵循传统实践之间的落差,凸显了晚清知识分子的文学现代化努力。在此过程中,儿童文学意识的逐渐觉醒,为中国儿童文学的发生奠定了基础。

During the social changes in the late Qing dynasty,The Children’s Educator took anti-tradi-tion as its banner.The intellectuals represented by Ye Han,who had the ambition of saving the country through education,tried to transform traditional primers through modern media.They introduced foreign texts,compiled folk texts,retold historical stories,made the language more colloquial and stories more pictorial,and graded the readers,which led the trend of children’s literature to meet the needs of children’s education.However,confined to the educational policy and political situation,The Children’s Educator was constrained by tradition while innovating,and unconsciously fell into the traditional pattern.In the process of pro-tradition and anti-tradition,it demonstrated the dialogue between the literati and folks,the game between the official guidance and the demands of the people,the collision between the local culture and the foreign culture,and the confrontation between the old and the new.The discrepancy between the intention of transforming tradition and the reality of following tradition highlights the efforts of the late-Qing-dynasty intellectuals to modernize lit-erature.In this process,the awakening of the consciousness of children’s literature provided the basis for the occurrence of children’s literature in China.