Ning Jiayu: Should the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature return from "west" to "east"?
China News Service Tianjin, April 4 Title: Ning Jiayu: Should the Study of Ancient Chinese Narrative Literature Return from "West" to "East"?
China News Service reporter Zhang Daozheng
Chinese academia has a long history and is self-contained and distinctive. Since modern times, with the introduction of Western culture, the Chinese academic system, including the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature, has basically been covered by the Western paradigm. The Western academic system has strengthened the paradigm method of academic research in many ways, but after a century of practice, it has gradually exposed the disconnection from the "disharmony" with Chinese local research objects.
Ning Jiayu, a talented professor and doctoral supervisor of Nankai University, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency's "East and West Question", taking the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature as an example, analyzing the necessity and feasibility of using the study of the indigenous inherent story type of Chinese narrative literature (that is, the study of Chinese narrative culture) to replace the Western academic research paradigm with the study of stylistic history and writers' works as the main body.
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: In your opinion, what is the basic pattern of the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature?
Ning Jiayu: Compared with the West, ancient Chinese narrative literature with novels and operas as the main body not only produced and matured late, but also formed a unique pattern and characteristics in the research paradigm, which is concentrated in the main body of commentary-based research. This kind of research is influenced by traditional Chinese scattered thinking, and has the characteristics of being unfettered and sensitive. Its disadvantage is the lack of grand system awareness and close logic control.
In August 2020, aerial photography of the "Peony Pavilion" rice field art painting in Zhangpu Town, Kunshan, Jiangsu Province. China News Service reporter Yang Bo photographed
Since modern times, the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature has been influenced by the Western academic paradigm, and the study of the history of the Western narrative literature genre and the systematic study of writers' works have replaced the previous chinese criticism-based research. Lu Xun's "Outline of the History of Chinese Novels", Wang Guowei's "History of Song and Yuan Opera", and Hu Shi's series of examinations on Chinese Zhang Hui novels all reflect the transformation of the research paradigm from "east" to "west". Throughout the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature for more than a hundred years, although there are many numbers and remarkable achievements, the basic pattern is "western style for use".
China News Service: What are the advantages and disadvantages of the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature under the Western academic system?
Ning Jiayu: From a favorable point of view, it makes up for the lack of academic system and close logical relationship caused by the improvisation and feeling of previous evaluation-based research. For more than 100 years, the study of Chinese narrative literature has made great progress and fruitful results in the study of stylistic history and writers' works, and has successfully achieved integration and integration with the international academic community.
But with the deepening of research, its drawbacks have gradually surfaced. Its important manifestation is that this paradigm is discordant and disconnected from the inherent form of Chinese narrative literature itself.
An important feature of the inherent form of Chinese narrative literature itself is a literary collection centered on the type of story and connecting many genres and writers' works. Taking the "West Chamber" story type as an example, the love thread of Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying is its core element. Around this center, from the Tang Dynasty Yuan Shu's "Yingying Biography", to the Jin Dynasty Dong Xieyuan's "West Chamber" palace tune, and then to the Yuan Dynasty Wang Shifu's "West Chamber" miscellaneous drama, successive generations of writers have not only created many mainstream narrative literary works, but also produced hundreds of poetry chants and allusions with the theme of this story type.
In 2012, the classic Kunqu opera "Xi Xiang Ji" was staged in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Photo by Wang Jiankang, China News Service
In the face of so many genres and the types of stories formed by writers' works, the Western research system with stylistic history and case writers' works as the basic paradigm is unable to handle it. As a result, many of the self-contained documentary materials can only be divided into different genres and writers' works: the history of novels focuses on the "Tale of the Warbler" of the novel style, the history of opera focuses on Wang Shifu's "West Chamber" as a miscellaneous drama, the Zhugong tune pays attention to the "West Chamber" and the palace tone, and a large number of poems with the West Chamber story as the theme and allusions are included in the research scope of different genres and writers' works. Because of this, the West Wing story genre cannot be observed, examined, and systematically studied as a whole.
It can be seen from this that departing from the actual situation of "China" and completely applying and copying "West" cannot ultimately solve the research problem with China's own characteristics.
China News Service: How to solve the drawbacks caused by the Western academic paradigm to the study of ancient Chinese narrative literature?
Ning Jiayu: The basic idea of solving the shortcomings of the Western academic paradigm should be to return from "western use" to "chinese body western use". This "body" is the inherent form of Chinese narrative literature itself- the story type, that is, from the study of the stylistic history of the Western paradigm and the works of writers, back to the study of the story type of Chinese narrative literature.
Although the story type is "medium body", it cannot completely abandon and exclude "Western use". Because in terms of methodology, traditional point-of-point research methods still can't solve the system and global research of story types. It is necessary to start from the actual research of the story type and find a suitable method.
After years of exploration and thinking, thematic methods in the field of Western folk tale research have reference value. The biggest feature of the story form of folk stories with oral transmission as the communication channel is the diversity and complexity of the story form caused by the uncertainty of the content in the process of oral transmission. The decisive lever behind this feature is the vertical historical and cultural background and the horizontal regional cultural differences.
Thematic science is based on the comprehensive collection and sorting out of folk tale types, the case story type is a comprehensive material collection style and cultural motivation analysis, to find out the historical culture and regional cultural factors behind various forms of folk tales. Both the folk story type and the narrative literature story type belong to narrative literature, which are very similar in content elements and formal elements, and have the characteristics of "multiple deductive forms of the same story" in the form of individual story types. These commonalities are an important theoretical basis for the study of thematics for the study of the types of stories in ancient Chinese narrative literature.
In October 2018, the American Nuwa Story Delegation came to Geng Village, Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, to exchange stories with the children of the village. Photo by Zhai Yujia, a reporter from China News Service
Referring to the Western thematic approach, I think about constructing a research method that overcomes the shortcomings of the Western research paradigm and targets the story type form of Chinese narrative literature - Chinese narrative culture. The basic procedural steps include: first, groping and sorting out the base number and categories of the story type of ancient Chinese narrative literature; second, selecting the story type with research value for carpet and exhaustive and fishing literature mining (regardless of style and carrier, without any threshold restrictions); third, reading and combing the relevant documents of the story type to find out the morphological similarities and differences of the story type in the process of vertical diachronic development and horizontal regional dissemination; fourth, Analyze and summarize the internal historical, cultural and literary motives that form all the morphological similarities and differences of this story type.
Although the method of Chinese narrative culture studies refers to Western thematic studies in terms of thinking, its object is the type of Chinese narrative literature story, which constitutes a distinct Chinese subject characteristic. At the same time, the concept and method of exhausting and fishing in the collection of literature and materials also originate from the Chinese Qianjia School of Examination. The analysis of the historical, cultural and literary dynamics of the similarities and differences in the form of story types has the common characteristics of Chinese and Western historical and cultural research methods. Therefore, this method is more in line with the pattern of "Chinese body and Western use".
Photo by Du Yang, a reporter from China News Service
China News Service: What is the significance of the study of Chinese narrative culture, which is mainly based on the study of story types, for Chinese scholarship to return from "west" to "east"?
Ning Jiayu: The disconnection and "disharmony" between the Western academic paradigm and the Chinese research object in the field of ancient Chinese narrative literature research is not an isolated phenomenon. For historical reasons, from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century to the present, the methodological paradigm of Chinese academia basically came from the West. These methodological paradigms from the West have played an important role in changing the lack of overall planning and meticulous logical integration of Chinese scholarship in the past, but the discord between Western academic paradigms and their research objects in different disciplines is not an isolated problem.
When writing the History of Chinese Philosophy, Mr. Feng Youlan said that there is no word "philosophy" in China, and now it is influenced by the Western academic and cultural system, and it is also necessary to write a history of philosophy. Therefore, according to the system framework and plate model of western philosophical history, materials that conform to the framework of Western philosophical history were selected from Chinese historical texts and made organizational statements. Such a philosophical history is a typical "Western body for use" model. Its value is to make up for the shortcomings of China's philosophical history that does not fully reflect the philosophical ideas of previous generations and run through history, but the problem that follows is that in addition to those materials that conform to the framework of western philosophical history, there are many missing materials. How do these materials relate to the intellectual history of Chinese dynasties? What is the pattern of Chinese intellectual history that they form together with the selected materials? These are all important issues worth pondering and exploring in the relationship between "China" and "West" in the field of intellectual history, and are related to the return of the main body of China's academic system.
In view of this, there is an urgent need to unify the understanding of this issue in various disciplines and fields, rise to rethinking and positioning the entire Chinese academic subjectivity, and then grasp it as an important aspect of cultural self-confidence. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Ning Jiayu, Doctor of Literature, is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor of Nankai University. Mainly engaged in the teaching and research of ancient Chinese literature and culture, the research areas mainly involve ancient Chinese literary novels (represented as the "Outline of the General Catalogue of Chinese Literary Novels"), ancient Chinese literature and culture (represented as "Wei Jinshi Personality Spirit"), Chinese narrative culture (represented as the "Pre-Tang Narrative Literature Story Theme Type Index") and so on. He has undertaken many projects of the National and Ministry of Education, and his achievements have been awarded many times. At present, he is the chief expert of the major project of the National Social Science Foundation "Proofreading Certificate of the Novel Series of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Whole Han Dynasty, Wei and Jin Dynasties".