近百年来历史故事研究的范式转换

The Paradigm Change in the Research of Historical Stories in the Past Hundred Years

如何认识中国先秦时期丰富的历史故事一直是学界关注的问题,在史学思潮多元发展的过程中,历史故事研究范式也因应思潮嬗变而发生转换。顾颉刚提出“用故事的眼光解释古史构成的原因”至今已百年,其对孟姜女故事演变历程的爬梳提供了科学史学的实践典范,推动中国古代历史故事研究走向现代。随着文化人类学的发展传播,“结构”“母题”“符号”等具有现代意义的概念介入历史研究,研究者开始对故事进行群体的、跨文化的考察,文化意义成为探索故事深层结构的主要取向。后现代主义兴起后,受此影响的研究者试图消解结构的意义,放弃勾勒故事的历史线条,转而以“记忆”“知识”等更微观、更个体化的环节取而代之,关注历史故事与社会生活的双向互动是这一时期的重要特征。

How to understand the abundant historical stories in pre-Qin China has always been a concerned issue in the academic community.During the pluralistic development of the ideological trend of historiography,the research paradigm of historical stories has changed correspondingly.A hundred years ago,Gu Jiegang built up the paradigm of explaining the composition of ancient history from the perspective of researching story.The analysis of the changes of Meng Jiang’s story has provided a practical example of the evolutionary view of history.With the development of cultural anthropology,the motif,the structure and the symbols were involved in the research of historical stories.Scholars began to conduct research on historical stories by group and cross-cultural investigation.After the rise of postmodernism,scholars tried to deconstruct the meaning of the structure.They gave up exploring history hidden in the stories,and turned to using memory or knowledge to replace it.Focusing on the two-way interaction between historical stories and social life is an important feature of this paradigm.