民國初期的史詩焦慮和寫作

Epic Anxiety and Writing in Early Republican China

史詩作為一個外來的文類和概念，最初由西方傳教士引介到晚清中國，當時遭受西方文明「現代性斷裂」的文人志士，沒有發現史詩的重要性。遲至民國初期才掀起史詩理論和創作的熱潮，在抗日戰爭爆發後才休止。本文首先以普魯士傳教士郭實臘和英國博教士艾約瑟的文章為起點，重建了民國文人能夠接觸到的西方史詩論理，由此討論了中國文壇因「史詩缺席」而產生的文化焦慮；緊接在理論浪潮之後，即是史詩寫作的趨勢，本文著重分析了葉紹鈞〈瀏河戰場〉和孫毓棠〈寶馬〉在內的幾首史詩寫作，再加以定位。〈寶馬〉被中共官方主流論述埋沒四十年後，才被司馬長風《中國新文學史》（1975）重新出土，並給予高度評價，堪稱民國詩歌中的頂尖之作。本文的論述雖以民國初期（1911-1949）為中心，在結尾處一併概述了中共建政以來，少數民族史詩問世後的變化，以及新時期詩人的努力。

The epic, as a foreign literary genre and concept, was initially introduced to late Qing China by Western missionaries. At the time, literati and intellectuals grappling with the“modern rupture”of Western civilization failed to recognize the significance of the epic. It was not until the early Republican era that a fervor for epic theory and composition emerged, subsiding only after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War. This paper begins by reconstructing the discourse on“Western epics”accessible to Republican-era intellectuals, taking as its starting point the writings of Prussian missionary Karl Gützlaff and British missionary Joseph Edkins. It then examines the cultural anxiety within Chinese literary circles stemming from the“absence of the epic.”Following this theoretical wave came a trend of epic writing, and this paper focuses on analyzing several epic compositions, including Ye Shaotao’s“The Battlefield of Liuhe”and Sun Yuqin’s“Bao Ma”, before reassessing their literary positioning. The“Bao Ma”, after being buried for four decades under the dominant discourse of the Chinese Communist Party, was rediscovered and highly praised in Sima Changfeng’s A History of Modern Chinese Literature (1975), where it was hailed as a masterpiece of Republican-era poetry. Although this paper primarily centers on the early Republican period (1911-1949), it concludes with a brief overview of the shifts brought about by the emergence of ethnic minority epics after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, as well as the efforts of poets in the New Era (1978-).