八方風雨會「文學」

Abstract

本文旨在討論「文學」一詞今義的形成，認為此一情形乃晚明天主教和晚清基督教合力建構使然。1623 年艾儒略刊刻《西學凡》和《職方外紀》二書，提出「文藝之學」一稱，主要內容包含各種詩文與議論文章等等。1635 年，楊廷筠在身後出版的《代疑續篇》中引用尤為《職方外紀》的艾著，改「文藝之學」為「文學」二字，而此乃「文學」擺脫《論語》以來以孔門經籍或教育修身為主的古義之始。楊廷筠的用法，清中葉以後的基督教傳教士如艾約瑟賡續之，而且在《六合叢談》中指陳內含史詩、悲喜劇與史傳等西方古來文學文類，甚至含括西人觀念中的修辭學在內。「文學」的今義，自此燦然大備，而且隨魏源《海國圖志》與維新派人士與文人如梁啟超與王國維等人的援用，逐漸演為中國現代性的一環。

This paper argues that wenxue, or ＂literature＂ as we understand it today, came into being as the result of collaborations that took place between the 17^(th) and 19^(th) centuries among Catholic missionaries and Protestant priests in China. Browsing through early Jesuit works like Guilio Aleni’s Xixue fan, published in 1623, one already witnesses the expression wenyi zhi xue, or ＂the study of creative writing,＂ employed to denote what traditional scholars regarded as shi and ci poetry. Aleni’s usage of this term suggests famous sayings by ancient sages, historical accounts of nations, poetry and prose, and argumentative essays. In his Zhifan waiji, also published in 1623, Aleni again referred to literature as wenyi. Some four years later, when the Christian convert Yang Tingyun, changing only one character in Aleni’s phrase, employed the term wenxue in his posthumously published booklet Daiyi süpien, he clearly meant what Aleni had referred to as ＂literature.＂ China’s literary modernity therefore has deep roots in Jesuit impact. Before the 20^(th) century, however, Yang’s wenxue was reinforced and even enriched by such Protestant missionaries as Joseph Adkins in his columns on Western Learning, which began appearing in the Shanghai Serial in the 1850s. Adkins provides a general account of Western literature since Homer, introduces distinguished genres such as tragedy and comedy. Further, by including historiography and rhetoric under the rubric of wenxue, he enlarges the scope of this term to its full, modern dimensions, followed by Wei Yuan, Liang Qichao, and Wang Guowei, political, social, and even literary reformists flourished after the Mid-Qing.