明末清初的小说续书理论

The Novel Sequel Theory in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties

明未清初是小说史上续书作品迭出的时期,明代的“四大奇书”几乎都有续作问世。这些续书无论在思想上还是在艺术上,均没有达到原著的水准,因此备受后世论者的轻视和贬低。但人们在批评续书时并没有把续书说得一无是处,有些论者不但对续书创作给予了合理的解释,还提出不少创作续书的方法,有的甚至道出了续书创作的难处。他们常常也揭示出文学创作、尤其是小说创作的一般规律。明末续书作者陈忱,清初续书评论者刘廷玑、蔡元放等即是续书理论批评的代表人物。

The Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties were the booming period of the sequels of novels. There appeared the sequels of the 'four amazing books' of Ming Dynasty. These sequels failed to achieve the level of the originals neither in ideology nor in art, so they were greatly belittled and deprecated by the later reviewers. But they did not think there was nothing good about them. Some of the reviewers not only offered rational interpretation to them, but also put forward quite a few ways of sequel creation, others even mentioned the difficulty of sequel creation. Their reviews revealed the regular pattern of the literary creation. Chen Chen, the sequel writer of the late Ming Dynasty, Liu Ting-ji, the sequel reviewer of the Early Qing Dynasty and Cai Yuan-fang were all representatives of the sequel review theory.