The Underside of "Talent and Beauty": The Representation of Women in the Peony Pavilion and "An Encounter with an Immortal"

「才子佳人」底蘊：「牡丹亭」與〈會真記〉中的女性再現

本論文以湯顯祖《牡丹亭》和元稹〈會真記〉為文本，探討中國傳統才子佳人故事中女人再現的議題。援引拉崗派心理分析中攸關性∕別的論述，我觀察科舉社會裡女人和象徵建置的關係，試圖挖掘才子佳人故事頌揚男女情愛表象之下的性別糾葛。首先，以《牡丹亭》的女主角杜麗娘為例，我說明傳統女人融入象徵建置體系時的自我否定。其次，楬櫫拉崗「騎士愛情」（"courtly love"）和「戀慕她者」("object a"）的理論，我分析杜麗娘及〈會真記〉中的崔鶯鶯如何透過「扮裝」以成為心儀才子之「戀慕她者」，進而析論才子與佳人之間複雜的愛戀與權力關係。最後，透過對兩部文本一喜一悲結局的閱讀，我指出女人必得透過婚姻以在象徵建置中攻佔一席之地。簡言之，才子佳人故事表面書寫女人情慾，實則以收納女人於男性中心象徵建置為敘述主軸。與其說才子佳人故事歌頌女人真「情」（"passion"），還不如說象徵建置透過故事中佳人的穿針引線滋長茁壯。

This paper explores the representation of women in Yuan Zhen's "An Encounter with an Immortal"（"Huizhenji"） and Tang Xianzu's The Peony Pavilion（Mudan ting） as two exemplary works of "talented scholars and beautiful women"（caizi jiaren）. Drawing upon several Lacanian concepts about the representation of sexual differences, I explore the complicated power relations between the talent and the beauty while querying into the underside of the stories' portrayal of women's passion（qing）. First, taking Du Li-niang as an example, I investigate the beauty's "negative entry" into the symbolic. Secondly, in light of the Lacanian idea of "court1y love" and "object a," I analyze both Du and Cui Ying-ying's "masquerade" to be the（phallic） object of male desire. Finally, I investigate how the beauty ascends from being an object of male desire to achieving a subject status in the symbolic economy through her marital relation with a man. My thesis is that fundamental to the Chinese pre-modern stories of "talent and beauty" is women's endeavor to be integrated into the symbolic. Instead of revealing women's "real" desire, the stories of "talent and beauty" dramatize symbolic order's operation in and through women.