论新文学史上的四部奇遇小说

A Comparative Study of Four Adventure Novels in the History of Modern Chinese Literature

沈从文的《阿丽思中国游记》、张天翼的《鬼土日记》、老舍的《猫城记》和张恨水的《八十一梦》,以其讽喻性、幻想成分和深蕴的忧虑精神在现代文学史上自成一格。四部作品包含一个基本的图式,即游历者误入一个陌生世界亲历了种种令人称奇的事件,奇遇小说的概念亦由此而生。与常态的讽刺小说相比,奇遇小说的最大特点在于叙事主体"陌生者"的身份设定可以使他们充分领略所谓的"异国情调",而托言奇境的叙述对象又成为作家肆意笑谑冷嘲热讽而不必顾虑的保护伞,这恰恰提供了公正地、透彻地看待社会现实与人性的隐蔽机会,在寓言的意义上具体地呈现完整的时代图景。

Shen Congwen′s Alice′s Adventures in China, Zhang Tianyi′s The Diary from Ghost Land, Lao She′s A Tale of Cat Country and Zhang Henshui′s The EightyOne Dreams fall into the unique category of adventure novels in that they have the following shared characteristics: allegoricalness, fantasy, and profound melancholiness, and that they have similar plot: a traveler enters a strange world and experiences a variety of strange events. Unlike ordinary satirical novels, adventure novels are characterized by the fact that the narrator is a stranger who has a better understanding of the socalled 'exoticness of a foreign country', and that the wonderlands described in the novel provides an umbrella under which the writer can ridicule and satirize society and human life without scruple, thus presenting allegorically a panorama of the times.