布袋戲的敘事模式及其可能性

The Narrative Problem of Puppet Theatre in Taiwan

以往布袋戲的研究成果，大多僅止於表演變遷的概括描述，或停留在懷舊式的印象批評而已，就如同二十世中葉語言學界主流的描述語言學。但布袋戲複雜而歧異的表演型態，是否可以簡單的敘事模式來解釋？從口頭表演創作的角度來看布袋戲，語言學的研究方法具有相當值得參考價值，特別是喬姆斯基提出的生成語法理論。為了尋找語言創造性的秘密，他將語句區分為表層結構／深層結構，並且尋找句法的基礎單元以及轉換形式的規則。他相信有一套基礎語句製造器可以改寫語句，也有一套詞彙規則可以讓語句的創作生生不息。此外，法國敘事學的學者，如簡奈特、托拓洛夫，都給本文相當大的啟發。站在這些學術理論者的肩膀上，或許更一窺這種口頭表演的奧秘。本論文的企圖在於發掘布袋戲創作力的來源，在既歧又異變化多端的口頭表演文本，尋找一套簡而易操的創作規則。結構分析的純理性分析，可說是提供一種理解的架構，可讓我們瞭解布袋戲表演如何完成其敘事，及其可能性的問題。本文並不將重點放在單一文本的解讀，而是廣泛地參考布袋戲表演文本，從演出的段落分析出發，思考其敘事結構與多重可能性。其次將檢討相關的英雄塑造及戲劇危機的產生與解除，最後歸結布袋戲創作的寬廣可能性。

This paper will explore the narrative problem of puppet theatre (po-te-hi) inTaiwanese language. A great deal of effort has been made on Taiwan’s puppet theatre.What seem to be lacking, however, is to understand its problem of improvisation,especially its aspect of oral performance. It seems that there is no rule, and just dependsthe capacity and personal habit of puppeteer. Surprisingly no studies have ever tried tounderstand whether there is a rule of creativity on puppet theatre, and its advantagebeyond ‘dead theatre’.In the last few decades a considerable number of studies have been made ondevelopment history of puppet theatre, or description many genres of performance, butlittle is known about problem of narrative. There is an interesting scholar paradigm onmodern linguistics, especially Noam Chomsky’s theory of transformational generativegrammar. He suggests that traditional linguist describes and attempts to account forability of a speaker to understand an arbitrary sentence of his language and to producean appropriate sentence on a given occasion. The most striking aspect of linguisticcompetence is what he calls the ‘creativity of language’. In its study, Chomsky advanceda theory of syntax, including of surface structure/ deep structure, base phrase-maker/transformation-maker or generalized phrase-maker, etc. In addition to this, the narrativetheory of Gerard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov made us open our mind and drawattention to concern issue. It is the height of my ambition to attempts to discover the creativity of puppettheatre in Taiwanese, to find whether exists a simple rule to explain the diversity oforal performance. In this paper, I wanted to discuss the basic narrative-maker and itstransformation by general investigation on many performance-texts.