文学性的叙事与通俗化的经典——论黄仁宇《万历十五年》的书写策略

黄仁宇的《万历十五年》在欧美史学界推出后,即成为一首以英文叙事讲唱给欧美读者倾听东方历史故事的通俗性叙事歌曲。其汉语读本在中国出版后也呈现出惊人相似的现象,即通俗性。但是《万历十五年》所秉有的通俗性在特质上有着自己的内涵,是以历史事件的叙事真实性收获读者而达向学术的通俗性或历史的文学性。从历史铭刻在本体上的相对原始印迹看,《万历十五年》在其相当通俗化和文学性的叙事中恒持着历史的真实。《万历十五年》毕竟是在美国学界语境下所撰写和翻译的,所以英汉两个文本所呈现出来的通俗化、大众性、文学性与作者所栖居的那个时段、区域的后现代文化语境是同步的。《万历十五年》潜在的叙事结构具有小说性的叙事模式,明代万历年间的历史在作者的文本结构中被组接为一个个故事性叙事,我们只要翻阅其目录,就不难发现这部史学著作就是一个个故事的逻辑编排,整部叙事文本充溢着文学性与小说性的形式主义色彩。同时,黄仁宇在《万历十五年》的历史叙事中所给出的隐喻,即对20世纪70年代治国方略的启示,也因时过境迁产生了当下阅读语境与文本隐喻思想的疏离。

A Classic of Literary Narrative and Popularization:On the Writing Strategy of Ray Huang's "1587,A Year of No Significance"

Ray Huang's "1587,A Year of No Significance" turns out to be a ballad of popularized narrative offering,in English,stories of Eastern history to the occidental scholars and lay readers ever since it was present to the Western academe of historiography.Its popularization is found again in China with an amazing similarity when the Chinese version was published.However,the success of "1587" as a popularized writing lies in its insistence on historical facticity with a rather popular and literary narrative style.Composed and translated in the American academic context,the popularity and literariness of both the English and Chinese versions synchronize the post-modern culture context of the time and place of the author.The latent narrative structure of "1587" is that of a fiction:the history of the Wanli period in Ming dynasty is composed into fictional narratives in the structure of the text.The author presents attractive stories where historical events and figures are intervened in a gracefully refreshing style.Besides,the metaphor that Ray Huang presents in the historical narrative of "1587",that is,the enlightenment it offers to the state policies of the 1970s is estranged from the present-day's reading context due to the change of time.