夏志清文学史观质疑

Critical Inquiry into Xia Zhiqing's View of Literary History

编者按:美籍华裔学者夏志清的《中国现代小说史》发表半个多世纪以来,先是在国外,后来在国内,都产生了较大的反响。特别是在国内,对于改变长期形成的国内文学史书写模式,起到了重要作用。但是,由于夏志清的意识形态偏见,也由于其文学史观、审美判断的另类性质,还由于他与当时的国内社会现实、思想文化界和文学界比较隔膜,致使其文学史产生了颇多争议。

The book History of Modern Chinese Fiction written by the Chinese-American scholar Xia Zhiqing had huge impacts abroad and later in China since published half of century ago.Particularly,it has played a crucial role in changing the form of literary history that had been long established.However,Xia's literary history is controversial due to his ideological bias,alternative approach to literary history and aesthetic judgement.He has also been criticized for his detachment from China's social realities and ideological currents,while he is alienated from its cultural circles and literary circles.Therefore,the question of how to evaluate Xia's history of fiction is not only literary question,but also an academic and political concern.Professor Wen Rumin once pointed out that there existed a'Sinological mind'in literary studies.For example,'Cold War thinking'and the control of'ideology'are very obvious in Xia's book.The'Sinological mind'treated American Sinology as an academic standard,more than just a resource for reference.This is an insightful observation.Although Xia Zhiqing passed away,his view is still very influentical on Chinese literary research.The four essays of this issue aim to clarify ideas,to define the path of academic research and promote the development of the acadmic studies of literature through discussions.Yuan Liangjun evaluates Xia Zhiqing's history of fiction from two perspectives:on the one hand,it filled gaps of concentrating both on left-wing and some peripheral writers;on the other hand,Xia belittles the contributions of Lu Xun while praising writers like Zhang Ailing for his political bias.Gao Xudong argues that Xia's disparagement of Lu Xun was actually out of an ideological manipulation,which made him disregard common sense,history and logic when analyzing Lu Xun's work.Zhang Zhonggang points out the inherent contradiction between political and academic motivations in Xia Zhiqing's research.In other words,Xia Zhiqing never hid his ideological stance,however which is expressed a depoliticized voice through the literary analysis obscurely.This makes it impossible for him to state his position clearly between literature and ideology.Song Jianhua argues that although this book had great influence there contains great deal of errors in stating historical facts and data about Lu Xun,Yu Dafu,Lao She,Ba Jin,Jiang Guangci,Ding Ling,Shen Congwen,Zhang Tianyi and Xiao Jun.Xia Zhiqing's research on the history of fiction is a good example for us,through which we hope to promote the study of modern Chinese literary history on the right track.We are looking forward to more discussions on this topic.