吳德功《讓臺記》敘事時間研究

A Study on the Narrative Time of Te-kung Wu' 'Record of Yielding Taiwan'

吳德功（1850-1924），字汝能，號立軒，別號海外散人，彰化著名古典文學家。其生平著作除了詩歌、詩話外，散文是他非常重要的文學成就。其中的《讓臺記》，是一本史書，也是一本歷史散文，記述台灣割讓給日本時，台灣軍隊與日本軍隊發生的一連串戰爭衝突。這本書對於當時台、日軍隊戰事的記載而言，是非常重要的歷史資料，歷來對它的研究，也幾乎聚焦在史書史料上的問題。今筆者擬另闢蹊徑，從敘事學的角度切入，來分析它敘事時間的經營手法。在這當中，將探討其敘事時序的形態，以及敘事速度快慢的問題。透過本文的分析，在敘事時序的形態上，《讓臺記》大抵以「順敘」法為主，而以「倒敘」、「預敘」為輔。其中倒敘還呈現「內部倒敘」、「外部倒敘」、「部分倒敘」、「完整倒敘」等型態；預敘則有「內部預敘」、「暗示的預敘」、「明言的預敘」等類型。至於敘事速度的議題，透過與他書的比較，可以看出《讓臺記》在事件的描述上，敘事速度有時快，有時則較慢。前者常透過「省略」與「概述」的手法呈現，後者則是藉由「補敘」、「夾敘夾議」、「阡插」等手法來表現。本研究所使用的《讓臺記》，將以郭明芳的點校本為依據，這是目前較好的版本，較能呈現《讓臺記》定稿時的面貌，依此所作的研究可信度也較高。

"Te-kung Wu (1850-1924), whose courtesy name was Ju-neng, art name was Li-shuan, and nickname was Overseas Prose Writer, was a well-known classical writer in Changhua. In addition to poetry and poems, proses were also very important literary achievements in his life of writing. The 'Record of Yielding Taiwan' is a history book, as well as historical proses that document a series of wars and conflicts taking place between the Taiwanese army and Japanese army when Taiwan was yielded to Japan. This book is a very important historical data to the war records of the Taiwanese and Japanese armies at the time. Almost all the past studies focused on its value as a history book and historical material. The study intended to probe into this book from a different perspective – a narrative perspective, in order to analyze its method for describing the narrative time. This study also investigated the patterns of its narrative time and the issue of narrative speed. According to the analysis of this study, in terms of the patterns of narrative time, the primary pattern of 'Record of Yielding Taiwan' was generally 'chronological order' method, and the secondary pattern was 'flashback' (reverse chronological order) and 'pre-narrative.' Flashback included patterns, such as 'internal flashback,' 'external flashback,' 'partial flashback,' and 'complete flashback.' Pre-narrative included patterns, such as 'internal pre-narrative,' 'inexplicit pre-narrative,' and 'explicit pre-narrative.' For the issue of narrative speed, the comparison with other books showed that the narrative speed of event descriptions in the 'Record of Yielding Taiwan' is sometimes fast and sometimes slow. The former usually uses the skills of 'omission' and 'outline' for presentation, while the latter usually uses the skills of 'supplementary narrative,' and 'narrative in combination with discussion,' and 'interruption' for presentation."