文學概念的二十世紀轉變

Wenxue and New Practices of Writing in Post-1840 China

現在我們所知道的「文學」這個詞，是19世紀末從日本借用過來的。而日本所謂的「文學」二字，又是從英文的“literature”翻譯過來的。但「文學」這個詞，早在中國就已經被長久使用。20世紀初之前，「文學」一詞涵蓋的範圍比較廣闊，大約類似現在所說的「人文」，也和「文以載道」的「文」略有重疊。「文學」這個詞的「變遷」現在已是學術界的共識，但還值得更進一步分析。清末以前，中國當然有許多美學文字作品符合現在所謂的「文學」範疇，但一直沒有一個可以概括所有不同文類（比如詩詞，戲劇，小說等）的詞。從文學史的角度來看，這意味著什麼問題呢？在本文中，我希望重新思考這個問題，從最基本的問題，比如小說被視為「文學」的一部分，到比較複雜的概念，比如王國維「無用之用」的說法對傳統文藝思維提出了什麼樣的挑戰？而這個新的詞彙在多大的程度上，成為中國文字表述變化的契機？最有意思的現象也許是所謂的「複寫本效應」（palimpsest effect），也就是：近現代「文學」的「前歷史」（Prehistory）是否存在一個對文學的新意義和新作用的未確認影響？譬如說，新的「文學」一詞有了更廣闊的範疇（加入了小說和其他文類）和以前的文學含義有沒有本質上的衝突？此外：新的文學的定義在外國文藝思想的影響之下，是否也收到某些普世性／西方性美學觀點的制約？最後：中國近現代文學的搖擺顛簸的變化過程，在何種程度上，可視為不同「文學」的概念傳承的產物？

"It has been known for more than a century that the Chinese term wenxue 文學 in its now ordinary meaning as the equivalent of the English “literature” was a loan-word from Japanese, brought into China in the waning years of the nineteenth century. The older meaning of the term was something like our sense of “humanities,” and/or writing informed by a profound sense of moral and stylistic conviction. This change has become common knowledge, but its implications have rarely been explored.There was, of course, a large amount of aesthetic writing in pre-1900 China that fit within the definition of what we now refer to as wenxue, but what are the implications of the fact that there was never a single category that encompassed all the genres and forms we now take for granted as making up the constituent components of wenxue? In my paper, I intend to look into some of these implications, from the most obvious, such as the consequences entailed by the inclusion of xiaoshuo 小說 within “literature,” to the less easily detected, such as how the new category of wenxue affected the standing of discursive prose and its relation to the expression of ideas. To what extent, for instance, did Wang Guowei’s notion of the “purposelessness” of literature feed back into the movement to deny the efficacy of the classical language to express “modernity?” Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon is what might be called the “palimpsest effect,” or how the pre-existing sense of the term had an unacknowledged effect on its new meaning and function. This, on the one hand, expanded the sense of writing regarded as wenxue to the broader cultural role assigned to it in the pre-modern period, while, on the other, paradoxically setting limits based on a new sense of a particular set of aesthetic parameters and a need to fit into a newly conceived “international” sense of the term.To what extent can the tension-fraught history of wenxue in twentieth-century China be traced back to this collision of meanings in the early years of the century?"