雪梅故事的演變及文化解讀

The Evolution of Hsueh-Mei Story and its Cultural Interpretation

明代戲曲《三元記》，鋪陳女主角秦雪梅未嫁守寡，斷機教子，最後三元及第，一門榮顯的故事。這種節婦守貞、教子成立的故事主題，因符合傳統綱常禮教，在中國各地廣泛流傳。不同體裁的戲曲、小說、民間講唱都有雪梅故事，其內容則是在原來戲曲「祖本」的基礎上，沿用與變化。
本文首先針對雪梅故事涉及的歷史真實部份，提出與《曲海總目提要》不同的看法與證據；接著將雪梅故事的演變分為「原型」、「宿命型」、「考驗型」及「女性群相型」四種；進而探究不同類型的文化意義，得知雪梅故事雖因小傳統的傳播、流行而有所變化，但依舊統攝在大傳統貞節觀的系統中，限制了其他女性形象的發展。

The opera “San-Yuan Chi” in Ming dynasty elaborates the stories of widow Hsueh-Mei Chin who encouraged her son Shang-Lo to study hard by cutting the cloth being woven. Shang-Lo had finally passed the civil examination and manifested the glory of his family. Since the story subject, which describes a chaste woman taught her son hard and made him succeed, very accords with the righteousness and the feudal code of ethics, so that it was very popular everywhere in China at that time. There were different forms of literature existed for Hsueh-Mei story such as opera, novel, and folk story-telling art, however, the story among those forms always followed and was modified from the original play writing of opera “San-Yuan Chi”.
This research, firstly on the aspect of historical facts which Hsueh-Mei Story relates, raises different views and evidences from which proposed by Chu Hai General Catalogue of Opera. Then, the variations of Hsueh-Mei story were differentiated into four types: “origin”, “fatalism”, “trial”, and “female features”. Finally, through investigating the cultural meanings of those different story types, we realize, under the “little tradition”, even though the form of Hsueh-Mei story varied during the process of spreading and becoming popular, the role of female in the story was still confined in chasteness concept of “great tradition” system, which really limited the image development of female.