二十世紀初期的「西洋」：《漢文臺灣日日新報》通俗小說中的文化地景、敘事倫理與知識想像

The West at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Cultural Landscape, Narrative Ethics and Knowledge Imagination in Popular Fictions in “Hanwen Taiwan Zi Zi Xin Pao”

發行於1905年至1911年的《漢文臺灣日日新報》，在該報的小說欄上，曾經刊登了若干以西洋國家人、事、物為創作背景的通俗小說，由於「小說」在本質上具有地理學的特質，所以這些小說可以被解讀為展示臺人西洋地理知識與想像技術的極佳文本。此外，因為該報屬於漢文報紙，故當使用漢文去書寫西洋情事、地理空間時，顯然也具備了翻譯／翻異的跨文化／跨語際的文學想像與文化意涵。而在相關小說中，被書寫的西洋國家包括了古羅馬、法國、俄國、英國、美國……等，創作者試圖道出各國的殊異面貌或特質，只是若深究其中的西洋文化地景，仍然可見不夠真實甚而是虛構的描寫，這說明了此際臺灣與西洋國家之間實際存有「時間」與「空間」的距離感。再者，小說除了引介科學器物的物質現代性外，其實所描述的更是屬於東西洋共有的人間世界、日常生活的圖像，且格外鋪陳兄弟、夫婦或男女情愛之間倫理道德的重要性，這凸顯了作者對於西洋國家及其文化的特殊關注取向，明顯有著自我的視角和文化框架。至於作家究竟使用了何種修辭技術去呈現西方社會性、現代性，並將西方詞彙、觀念、知識轉為臺人所能接受的話語，觀諸小說可以發現在飲食男女的框架裡敘述日常生活故事，是這些具有西洋知識啟蒙意味的通俗小說慣用的敘述模式；另外，偵探文類的誕生與摹寫，更是符應刻畫西方現代性和城市文明的最佳入徑。大抵而言，這些小說反映了明治時期臺灣的「西洋」認識論，且也同時顯露出二十世紀初期臺人對於理解、想像西方現代性的思維高度。 “Hanwen Taiwan Zi Zi Xin Pao”(漢文臺灣日日新報), published between 1905 and 1911, systematically introduced the knowledge of the west in the classification columns such as telegraphs, miscellaneous and discussions, etc. Different from these columns, the fictions of the Post published novels based on people, events, and objects in the west in interesting and poetic ways. As a form of literature, fictions have geographical property. Therefore, these fictions could be further interpreted as the best foundation to express knowledge geography with landscape or even display the western geographical knowledge and imagination skill of people in Taiwan. These fictions were deeply supported by the then social context, having unique historical connection sensation structure. As a newspaper in Hanwen(漢文) with the first publication at the beginning of Japanese colonization, the Post apparently had cross-culture/ language literature imagination and cultural content of translation/ differences to write western things and geographical space and time . Among current researches, I find that number of novels on western countries including the ancient Rome, France, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S, etc, overall, is not as large as those on China and Japan, showing that cognition of western countries of people in Taiwan is still in the beginning, which is different from the order of the relation with nearby world. One can still see unreal or fabricated descriptions, somehow like the narrative time had been compressed exceedingly, or misplaced, explaining the distance of time and space between Taiwan and western countries. However, frictions displayed the modern experiences of moving landscape among nations and among cities, enough to stimulate and initiate diverse geographical imagination of the flow of space and changes of territories of people in Taiwan. In addition to introducing the modernity of scientific objects, authors actually described a world across the nature and countries that belong to the human world of both eastern and western people, daily life images. The authors had their own visions and culture frame, and under the situation of social changes from turning of new knowledge and spread of Western influences to the East, they attempted to defend for their own traditional culture. They use daily life stories of the frame of men and women, which is the common description model of western knowledge enlightenment. Despite this, birth and copying of detective stories also the best entry to western modernity and urban civilization. In this paper, I discuss the cultural landscape, narration ethics, and knowledge imagination stories in the fictions which wrote by Taiwan writers at the beginning of Japanese colonization. This will help dig that what people in Taiwan knew about the qualities and meanings of the epistemology of the west then and express the thought height of understanding and imagination of the western modernity.