日常生活的宏大叙事:论欧美百科全书式叙事的文类特征

The Grand Narrative of Everyday Life:A Genre Study of Encyclopedic Narrative in the West

欧美文学中的百科全书式叙事具有专业知识含量庞大、体现民族整体文化的特点。本文以该文类的民族属性、专业知识、表现内容、疆域范围等几个方面为切入点,尝试对百科全书式叙事的文类特征进行全面、系统的分析,旨在更好地理解和把握它的历史轨迹、创作主旨和美学特征,为文类研究提供有益的参考和示例。本文认为,百科全书式叙事源于作者创作史诗的强烈愿望,具有明显的总体性与民族性特征;其专业知识之庞大、表现内容之琐细,都是为了全方位展现所在民族文化的知识与信念。尽管随着民族差异的渐趋模糊和阅读方式的快速转变,这一文类呈现出一定的不确定性甚至衰微之势,但其所代表的时代精神、叙事理念和审美意识,却以各种形式在文学创作中不断地延续和发展,可以成为我们审视文类疆界、发掘文化内涵的有效视角。

Encyclopedic narratives in Western literature are characterized by their enormous amount of knowledge and their overall presentation of national culture.This paper,from the perspectives of its national characters,types of knowledge,contents and boundaries,attempts to analyze,in a comprehensive and systematic way,the features of encyclopedic narrative as a genre.The purpose is to obtain a better command of its historical trajectory,subject matters,and aesthetic qualities,so that it might serve as a beneficial reference and illustration for genre studies.It is argued that encyclopedic narratives evolve from their authorsambition to create epics,thus showing distinctive features of totality and nationality;their enormous knowledge and trivial contents are both given to render the full range of knowledge and beliefs of a national culture.Although the genre shows some signs of uncertainty and even decline owing to the increasing blurring of national distinctions and the rapid change in reading styles,its Zeitgeist,narrative concepts and aesthetic notions can still find continued expression and development in various forms of literary writing,and therefore we can employ it as an effective angle to examine literary boundaries and excavate cultural connotations.