Tablets of Memory: Towards a Literary and Historical Study of Guanzhui Bian (Limited Views)

自1978年出版以来，钱钟书（1910-1998）的《观赏集》（GZB）就被誉为其文学生涯的最高成就，他创作了一些现代中国最具独创性的小说、散文和文学评论。虽然西方和中国的学者都对钱学森的长篇小说《围城》进行了详细的研究和翻译，但他们却更犹豫，不愿接近这部学术作品，因为它的范围太广，形式太奇怪，以至于无法想象所有的定义。也有一些明显的例外；Ronald Egan（1999）、Monika Motsch（1994）和Tiziana Lioi（2014）都努力将钱学森的学术介绍给更广泛的西方读者。尽管中国的语言研究更加多产，但它在很大程度上局限于根据钱学森的见解来研究中国文学史和哲学的特定时期，很少考虑钱学森对中国文学整体的更广泛的影响，或者对其构成的个别影响。正如张龙喜所写，到目前为止，对钱学森的学术几乎没有批判性的评价，没有给予它应有的信任和赞赏。”（2013）我的首要研究问题将寻求解决这一公认的知识差距。首先，我对GZB告诉我们的关于中国和世界文学的内容不太感兴趣，我更感兴趣的是，为什么这本百科全书式的学术著作会采取这样一种独特而难以捉摸的形式。辅助问题包括，但不限于，原始手稿是如何组成的，它是如何演变的？哪些人和机构（最著名的是牛津大学）对钱学森的文学发展和他后来的作品影响最大？等。我的研究方法可以分为三大类。第一步是对钱学森的个人档案进行前所未有的回顾，这些档案最近才由上海商务印书馆（2018）全文出版。这78卷传真包含了钱学森从1935年到牛津大学埃克塞特学院直到1998年去世前不久的几乎所有手写和打字的阅读笔记。我将首次尝试分析钱学森在创作GZB时是如何从他的笔记海洋中汲取灵感的。通过对他私人阅读的全面记录，我也试图构建一个钱学森内心生活的传记，并探讨它如何与他的巨著的精神和细节产生共鸣。在此过程中，我最感兴趣的是钱的私人记忆，以他的笔记的形式，如何塑造了他以GZB的形式建立文化记忆的努力。第二类是双重的：信件和机构研究。钱虽然是个低调的人，但他是一位令人敬畏的通讯员，与中外许多著名的学者和作家保持着书信关系。然而，这些信件还有待深入研究。通过收集所有散落在钱学森传记中的信件，并向他以前在中国、欧洲和美国的联系人寻求额外的材料，我希望能对他的生活和学术有一个新的认识。我在牛津大学的机构研究将集中在20世纪30年代中期的英语学院和埃克塞特学院，钱在那里获得了学士学位。他获得了学位，并培养了许多兴趣，这些兴趣将为他后来的小说和学术发展提供素材。第三类也是最后一类是比较性质的。在钱学森学术的世界主义精神中，我的目标是评估GZB的定义方面（即折衷主义，多语言主义）是否可以在其他面临类似危险环境的主要作家的作品中找到，或者有责任保护垂死的文学。首先，我打算考察沃尔特·罗利爵士（Sir Walter Raleigh）和埃兹拉·庞德（Ezra Pound）等作家对百科全书式学习的存在主义冲动。

Ever since its publication in 1978, Qian Zhongshu's (1910-1998) Guanzhui bian (GZB) has been hailed as the crowning achievement of a literary career that produced some of modern China's most original fiction, essays and literary criticism. While both Western and Chinese scholars have written at length on Qian's much read and copiously translated novel, Fortress Besieged, they have been more hesitant to approach a work of scholarship that appears so broad in scope and strange in form as to escape all conceivable definitions. There are some notable exceptions; Ronald Egan (1999), Monika Motsch (1994) and Tiziana Lioi (2014) have all laboured to introduce Qian's scholarship to a broader Western audience. Although more prolific, Chinese language scholarship has largely confined itself to examining specific periods of Chinese literary history and philosophy in the light of Qian's insights, and rarely tarries to consider the broader implications of GZB for Chinese literature as a whole, or the discrete influences on its composition. As Zhang Longxi writes, so far there has been very little critical assessment of Qian's scholarship to give it the credit and appreciation it deserves." (2013)My overarching research question will seek to address this commonly acknowledged gap in our knowledge. Primarily, I am less interested in what GZB tells us about Chinese and world literature than in why this encyclopaedic work of scholarship should have assumed such a unique and elusive form. Subsidiary questions include, but are not limited to, how was the original manuscript composed and how did it evolve? What people and institutions (most notably Oxford University) had the greatest influence on Qian's literary development and his later work? etc. My research methods fall into three broad categories. The first entails an unprecedented review Qian's personal archives, which have only recently been published in full by Shanghai Commercial Press (2018). These 78 volumes of facsimiles contain nearly all of Qian's hand written and typed reading notes from the time he arrived in Exeter College Oxford in 1935 until shortly before his death in 1998. I will attempt the first ever analysis of how Qian drew from his sea of notes when composing GZB. With a comprehensive record of his private reading, I also aim to construct a biography of Qian's inner life, and explore how it resonates with the spirit and particulars of his magnum opus. In doing so, I am most interested in how Qian's private memories, in the form of his notes, shaped his efforts to forge cultural memory, in the form of GZB. The second category is twofold: letters and institutional research. Though a private man, Qian was a formidable correspondent and maintained epistolary relations with many notable scholars and writers, both Chinese and foreign. These letters, however, have yet to be examined in any depth. By collecting all of the correspondence scattered throughout Qian's biographical paraphernalia and appealing to his former contacts in China, Europe and America for additional materials, I hope to throw new light on his life and scholarship. My institutional research at Oxford University will focus on the English Faculty and Exeter College during the mid 1930s, where Qian took his B.Litt. degree and established many of the interests that would feed into his later fiction and scholarship. The third and final category is comparative in nature. In the cosmopolitan spirit of Qian's scholarship, I aim to assess whether the defining aspects of GZB (i.e. eclecticism, multilingualism) can be identified in the work of other major writers faced with similarly precarious circumstances, or with the responsibility of preserving a dying literature. In the first instance, I intend to examine the existential impulse for encyclopaedic learning in writers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Ezra Pound.