意外的先驅——冷戰時期的文學調查、讀本政治與華語教學

Accidental Pioneer:Literary Surveys, the Politics of Readers, and Chinese Language Pedagogy during the Cold War

文學調查素來被認為是普通讀者文學品味之中立反應，因而甚少進入文學研究的視野。然而，文學調查的動機、前置作業與後續，從設計問題、擇定調查對象、抽樣、到編輯讀本等一系列過程，無一不深受時代背景、政治立場、意識形態所驅動。本文分析美籍研究生聶維斌（Neal E. Robbins）於1970年代末在台灣留學、工讀期間自發進行的文學調查。其留存的文件保留了從調查、與出版社洽談、編輯成書等一系列完整的過程。本文藉此探討文學調查與外譯、「典律的生成」以及華語教學之間的關係。
聶維斌的文學調查正好發生在1970年代文化大革命結束（1976）後以及台美斷交（1978）之前的冷戰罅隙。美、中、台關係之巨變不僅反映在外交關係上，美國的東亞系課堂上對華語文學的受容也為此經歷劇烈的調整。此際，台灣文學尚未大規模進入英語學界研究以及大學課堂。以此，聶維斌的文學調查成為台灣文學研究在英文學界尚未建制化時的「意外的先驅」。前行研究多將文學的翻譯放置在世界文學、翻譯理論等較為高蹈的研究次領域探索，但忽略了文學翻譯所肩負的另一項重要基礎功能—語言教學。聶維斌的文學調查與編輯顯示，在冷戰「兩個中國」的折衝之下，文學讀本亦是在西方爭奪的場域之一，值得學界進一步探索。

Literary surveys have often been regarded as neutral reflections of the general reader’s aesthetic preferences, and thus have rarely entered the purview of literary studies. However, the motivations, procedures, and outcomes of such surveys—from the design of questionnaires and selection of participants to sampling and anthology editing—are deeply shaped by the political, ideological, and historical conditions of their time. This article analyzes the literary survey conducted by American graduate student Neal E. Robbins in Taiwan in the late 1970s. The surviving documents preserve a complete record of his activities, from questionnaire design and correspondence with publishers to the compilation of a literary reader. Using this survey as a case study, this article explores the intersections among literary surveys, translation, canon formation, and the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.
Robbins’s survey took place in the interstice between the end of the Cultural Revolution (1976) and the severance of diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Taiwan (1978). During this period, drastic shifts in Sino-American–Taiwanese relations were reflected not only in diplomacy but also in how Chinese-language literature was received and taught in the East Asian studies classroom setting in the U.S. At that time, Taiwan literature had yet to gain institutional recognition in English-language academia; as such, Robbins’s survey became an accidental pioneer of Taiwan literature’s introduction to the Anglophone world. While previous scholarship has largely discussed literary translation in terms of world literature or translation theory, it has overlooked another foundational function of translation—the teaching of language itself. Robbins’s literary survey and editorial practice demonstrate that, amid the Cold War contest between the“two Chinas,”literary readers also constituted a site of cultural negotiation.